Question:
When did you begin working as a mediator or conciliator at CRS?

Answer:
Different dates for each of those. As a conciliator, July 1967. As a mediator, July of 1975.

Question:
When did you leave the agency?

Answer:
September 1994.

Question:
What were you doing prior to joining CRS?

Answer:
Each of these is going to raise more questions. You realize what you're letting yourself in for? I was a consultant in Southern Africa, through the Church Center for the United Nations at New York City.

Question:
And what did that job entail? Give us a background.

Answer:
I would be presenting current developments and interpreting the dynamics that were involved. I would explain why these actions were being taken by various parties in southern Africa and, in particular, churches in southern Africa. They had taken particular reference to what was then southern Rhodesia.

Question:
What was your background?

Answer:
In college? Undergraduate work which was political science.

Question:
So most of the job description, while your were working with this agency, had to do with conflict management or civil rights, is that correct?

Answer:
No, not all.

Question:
Were you involved with any other civil rights or conflict management?

Answer:
For five years, I did human rights work in southern Africa. That was preceding the work at the Church Center for the United Nations.

Question:
What was it that attracted you to CRS?

Answer:
When I came back from overseas, the New Society had developed a whole range of civil rights agencies that I had never heard of. For me this was a matter of becoming acquainted with as many of these as possible in a short period of time. Ultimately, pursuing and focusing on HEW, office of civil rights for one. The Community Relations Service with the Justice Department attracted my attention, because I felt like there was a need to go beyond the legal measure that had evolved under law of civil rights legislation. To get implementation, it ultimately comes down to working issues out at the local, community level. That's a position that I held for many years. Regardless of what state and federal government did.

Question:
We want you to get a little bit more specific and tell us about a typical case that you were involved in while you were at CRS. We want you to walk us through the entire process; how it came to your attention, what you did, did you have a game plan, who did you talk to? Walk us through.

Answer:
Excuse me if I interrupt you, but I've been working in human rights since 1954, in Alabama initially, then 1961 in Southern Africa. That earlier experience was very informative for me. I just want to slide that in, it didn't start in 1967, or 1961 even. You're interested in the dynamics of a selected case?

Question:
Right, I want you to pick a case that you were personally involved in, that you can sort of walk us through your involvement. We don't have anything in mind that we want you to specifically talk about. An interesting case and something that you can give detail about. After we do this, then we're going to go back and ask more general questions. We'll end up talking about a lot of different cases, but it often helps people get to a level of detail that we're interested in.

Answer:
Among the cases that came to my mind, that I thought were significant and showed the dynamics and so on, was the Indian treaty fishing case, the first one of these that I had handled. It deals with some of the difficulties we are confronted with in being able to develop mediation. This is distinctive. It's unlike labor management. This is a characteristic of what we are sometimes involved with. Another case is one in which questionable police actions generated community response and a coalition was formed to provide the community input in the mediation, and that in turn, evolving into an ongoing entity for dispute resolution in this area. That's a criminal justice issue. The other case I referred to was a mixture of criminal justice and treaty rights. Another one would be an education case, where a school board was faced with a paralysis, a standoff, and had to act, but for legal reasons could not act because of actions taken by the community and how we were able to work through that case to resolution. One is Indian treaty rights, another is school related, the third is criminal justice issues and all three are kind of complex and they led to a long succession of developments.

Question:
Is there a fourth?

Answer:
Well, there's a half dozen here, but I think those might provide dynamics that would be of a little more interest.

Question:
I think I'd be inclined to suggest the Indian fishing rights. We've heard a little bit about that kind of thing from Ed Howden, but nobody else has talked about that. A lot of people have talked about excessive use of force. We've heard a lot of stories on that already. We haven't heard that much about education either, so you might want to touch on that. But I'm intrigued with the Indian one.

Answer:
This was about 1977 in Seattle. I received a call from a tribal attorney, for the Squackson Island Indian Tribe, saying that members of this tribe were being harassed and assaulted, and even shot at. There is a particular island, where they have treaty fishing rights. It was an usual and accustomed fishing place even though it's completely off of the reservation. But, this was a traditional area, and treaties specify that they had a right to harvest fish in such locations. As I went down and met with the attorney and tribal chairperson and the fishery's chair, I eventually came out with a long list of issues that had developed in this case. One issue was the vandalism of boats and motors, gasoline supplies, fishing equipment, and cutting of nets by local residents, especially when they were not there. The Indian tribe had to leave the equipment on the island shore while they were away. The island was all owned as private property, and most of the owners had retired. It's connected by a land bridge, to the mainland. But the Indians traveled by boat to their tribal center. Anyway, their equipment was vandalized and they were being harassed while they were there. The result was that they were reaching the point where there was arming of the waters, as they put it. Indians were bringing firearms onto their boats, weapons to protect themselves. One recent example had been that someone on land had shot at a boat and hit a mast, just above the head of one of the tribal fisherman. Another example of what had happened is that they had accessed the waterfront area of private homes and had been shouted at, ordered off of the land, stating that, "This is private property. You don't own this. This is my land. I bought this." Words to this effect. Dogs were being released to attack the Indian fishermen. These were the main issues that had been raised in that first visit and in my talking with the Indian leadership. Then I got the names of persons, as far as I could, who were the alleged perpetrators of these kinds of acts. I wanted their identification, and what they had done about these on their own.

Question:
'They had done,' meaning what the Indians had done?

Answer:
Yeah, every aspect of their involvement that I could find, plus the extent of communication with the land owners and so on. And then I went to the island and began to make contacts with people there, starting with some of the people that they had mentioned. I asked, "What is your understanding of what's going on? Why is this happening?" Why and when. They referred to the Indians trespassing on private property, refusing to leave when ordered to do so by the owners of the land. Not only had they individually suffered from this, but neighbors, they say, in this particular bay, had complained of the same thing. And there had been some shouting matches back and forth. Abusive language, dangerous precedents being established. Among the charges were, Indian fishermen set up their nets indiscriminately, wherever they wanted to. These would be float nets out in the bay. According to Coast Guard regulations, they're to be lit at all times. At night, you can't see the nets. "And last week, a man came into the bay after dark," and according to some reports, he may have been under the influence of alcohol, "and his boat hit one of the nets and the boat capsized and he drowned. And we've had enough of this." That kind of attitude.

Question:
Did you have any trouble reading credibility with the land owners when you went over there? Was there anybody who was suspicious of you, or didn't want to talk to you?

Answer:
Oh, I think everybody that I contacted initially was suspicious of me. You had a lot of conflicts on the water itself. In Puget Sound, the State Department of Fisheries had confrontations in their small boats with sport fishermen in their large, fast boats. There had been one death there. The State Department of Fisheries enforcement officer had shot and killed the owner and operator of a large cabin cruiser that was bearing down on him at a high speed, allegedly. All of this is in reaction to the boat decision. Federal Court Judge Bolt issued a landmark decision stating that Indians had a right to fishing common. Which means, they were entitled to 50/50 catch of salmon in the Puget Sound area. If the Indians are not necessarily equipped to catch as many fish or salmon as the fisherman were equipped to fish, that's too bad. They have to hold back.

Question:
The commercial fisherman had to hold back?

Answer:
Yes.

Question:
When you say 50/50, that means the commercial fisherman get 50% of the catch?

Answer:
Shall not take more than 50% of the catch.

Question:
And the Native Americans?

Answer:
If the fishermen take a certain amount, then they have to stop fishing. The Indian tribal fisherman, they did not have the equipment, the gill netters, the persaniers, or some of these very expensive ships and larger fishing boats. They couldn't acquire fish as quickly as their rights said that they could. So all that created tension. That's the background of feelings in this. But what we're talking about here is rights of access, through private property, in order for the treaty rights to be exercised. As the Decision of 1911 put it, if Indians cannot access the water to exercise their fishing rights, then their right is being denied them. Therefore, they have a common law easement through private property to get to the waterfront, and in this case, the Indians were taking that to include if there's a dock there, then they have the right to go out on that dock and set their net on the end of that dock. I think all of the landlords were white, that I know of, but some of them complained about the Indians sleeping in the boats of the landowners, which are tied up at their dock, and leaving them a mess. Littering, defecating in public, in front of school children on their way to school, catching the school bus going up the street. They complained of loud music being played on radios when they camped out.

Question:
Did you ever witness any of this?

Answer:
No. It's all he said, they said and so on.

Question:
What did you do to gain access to the homeowners since they were distrustful of you?

Answer:
Excellent question. Well, they wanted to do something about these Indians who were trespassing on their private property. "We've called the Pierce County Sheriff's Office, and at first they would come out in response to our calls, and since then, they've refused to come out. They say they don't know what the law is relating to this." Which is, I think, an honest answer. This is a Twilight Zone in that area, where a law was to be made. And of course, nobody's ever heard of that 1911 decision. But there was a major problem.

Question:
So with you being from the Department of Justice, do you think the homeowners thought that you had the answer?

Answer:
Well, I probably represented some kind of an authority to them. They may have thought that I might be able to do something about these people, because the federal government has a special responsibility for Indian Welfare.

Question:
Were there any key people that wouldn't meet with you?

Answer:
I don't remember any key people who did not. But my problem that I immediately encountered from the very beginning, was that I realized when I started asking questions about the island and the community, there is no incorporated town on it. That's obvious. There were no formal community institutions except the historical society. That's the only club, and there were two small churches, but otherwise, there were no organizations that I could involve, including no mayor. The marine patrol of the Pierce County Sheriff's Office was the nearest thing to access law enforcement. There's no precinct on the island, of course.

Question:
What's the approximate population of the island?

Answer:
I knew at the time, but maybe a thousand people. But not all were waterfront, necessarily, as you would assume.

Question:
How big of an island is this?

Answer:
About six to eight miles long and maybe one to two miles wide. One end of which is joined to the land. You know, there was a small State Park with a boat launch at one end of it. That turned out later to be a crucial role.

Question:
Did you inform all parties that you were coming on sight before you actually got on sight? Did they know that you were coming, or did you just show up?

Answer:
Well, the tribal officials, they knew I was coming. They asked that I come and I said, "Yes, I would come." I had to go find the others, the residents on the island. I had a description of where they lived or where the incident took place, that sort of thing. One or two names were known, and the others were not.

Question:
So did you just go up and start knocking on doors?

Answer:
Exactly. I went to the area where I understood that they were talking about. This was a sharp contrast to the kinds of mediation that I was doing. Here, my task was to organize. I became a community organizer in order to have a bona fide, representative party composed of persons who would represent the interests of the people on the island. That needed to include those who were creating problems, as well as others who might provide some answers and positive leadership. That was what I was aiming at. A person that I made an early contact with was the pastor of a very small fundamentalist church, and I never did know where he lived. He was off the island and he was never involved. So it was the one church, the pastor, the one resident clergyman on the island who became a key person. There were two people who were identified by the tribal fishermen as people that they had particular problems with, more than once. Let's say Landowner A and Landowner B. After visiting with them, I had the issues from the Native American standpoint and the issues as identified by the landowners. The brandishing of weapons was one of the issues by both sides, I believe. Anyway, I came to meetings with them. I also talked to the State Department of Fisheries Enforcement personnel who had jurisdiction of that area and with the Marine Patrol of the Pierce County Sheriff's Office, to get information that they might have about this situation, confirming that they had been called and that they had not been involved beyond just responding and then leaving. I was talking to the sheriff, too.

Question:
What kinds of questions were you asking the third parties, the sheriffs and the fishery people?

Answer:
Their knowledge, their interpretation of what was going on. Their records that they had, in fact, been called and what they were told. They had these kinds of complaints, and what their view of what their authority was in these cases.

Question:
Did you have any particular order of people who you talked to?

Answer:
Well, I went to the people who called, first. My rule of thumb has always been to respond to those who call, and then take it from there. And that's usually a member of some minority group of some sort, who would call us most often.

Question:
Are those meetings private and confidential at that point, once you decide to come on sight?

Answer:
Not necessarily. At that point, you're just talking, discussing the situation with them. You're not in the group. I would offer confidence. I remember in this particular case, I would say, "If there's anything you wanna tell me in confidence, I'll keep it in confidence. I won't repeat it to anybody." When that seems to be needed for the purpose of getting communication or frankness and openness, I would certainly do that and respect it.

Question:
Is it commonly needed?

Answer:
No.

Question:
During this initial assessment period, are you basically feeling out the parties to find out what their issues are, what their positions are, or is there something else happening during this assessment? Are these groups asking you to do things, or asking you "What can you do," or "what's the feedback of the other groups?"

Answer:
Well, some things are happening directly and some things indirectly. One, my physical presence, in this kind of situation, is a source of some kind of reassurance that somebody's going to be able to do something about this. This is after explaining, more or less, what our role was.

Question:
You explain that to the group before?

Answer:
Oh yes, always. "My name is Bob Hughes, I'm from the Community Relations Service, US Department of Justice," and go on to explain what the agency is as concisely as I can, because they've never heard of it, invariably. And then I'd ask them, "Are there any questions you have about me and our agency?" And then once we get that out of the way, we go on to, "I'd like to talk about these issues that have been raised with me. Can you tell me what's been going on?" But what I'm after is the identification of issues, the parties to those issues, and what it would take to resolve those issues. Those are the three basic questions that I'm after, but I don't ask them in just that way. Secondly, I'm also getting information about the attitudes toward the other parties. Such as the extent of communication between the parties, if any, and I'm getting a feel for the possibilities for some sort of joint meeting, as one of the possible options. Some of the other things that are happening are that they're getting to know me and the agency, and I'm establishing a relationship with them, and I hope this is the basis of some degree of trust. The way that I pose my questions and the way that I'm not accusing them of being judgmental, trying to get as objective of an answer as possible. I think that's important at this stage. That's one of the things that's taking place. Also, in order to get answers from them, I may be, to a certain extent, interpreting to a limited degree the positions from the other side. That's a dangerous sort of thing to do, but in order to get their views of something, I may need to say, "I have heard, or understand, or was told, that so and so had happened, and they're very concerned about it. Are you aware of this?" That sort of thing. So it's the beginning of communication through me as a third party, but I keep that at a minimum at this stage.

Question:
It sounds like trust is very important in that initial assessment. How were you able to gain the trust of the parties?

Answer:
Okay, good question. Each time you go back to them, you're saying the same things, you're consistent. Consistency is important. And that can be a laborious process, but I usually start in going back over what I may have gone over with them before. "And as you may recall, the Community Relations Service is this and not that." After a certain amount of repetition, they begin to hear the same things consistently. Then when we finally get together, I say the same things again, and both sides are hearing it together. He knows that they know that he knows that they know. That sort of thing is building a basis for communication.

Question:
Now at the same time that you're building trust between you and the various parties, what are you doing to build the trust between the various parties themselves?

Answer:
I'm not necessarily doing that at this point. I'm trying to build a relationship with me, get me accepted, to empower me to be in a position to get them together. But in the back of my mind is that joint meeting out there, in which they're face to face and interpreting issues themselves, not through me. Hopefully they're consistent with what I may have alluded to, but of course they go much further than I would have.

Question:
In this particular case, what was the approximate turn-around time between when you decided to take the case, you got on sight, and you decided you can go to the table?

Answer:
So you're talking about me formulating recommendations of mediation to the parties?

Question:
Right. After you've talked with the parities involved, and you feel like this is something that could be mediated, and you make that recommendation.

Answer:
No, it's a little more specific than that. I would, after having talked with these various parties, let them know that I'm talking to these other parties. I may not name them all, but I'm asking, "Are there others that I need to talk to?" I've been involved in a lot of questioning with them, and at a certain point, I will say, "I now have some recommendations I'd like to make to you. When can we meet to discuss these?" And at that point, I would have developed answers to those three basic questions and what needs to be done about it. Is this a case where mediation might be effective? And then, once I develop my formulation for the case, that's when I meet with them separately, making no effort to get anybody together. If there's fighting going on, you try your best to stop the violence in order to develop dialogue, but we're not talking about that in this case.

Question:
Were there any parties for which you had to work extra hard to gain their trust? Parties that didn't want you to be there, and you had to really show them something above and beyond?

Answer:
I don't recall specifically, but the property owners would probably be the more tenuous relationship. They would have been more suspicious than the others, but I don't know. Again, I think that consistency is key and I try to let everybody know what I'm doing.

Question:
How long did your assessment take for this particular case?

Answer:
Goodness. We're talking about, how many years ago? My first trip down was to get the Native American side. Then tracking down, and arranging to come down the following week to try to locate the property owners. Then meetings with law enforcement to get their insights or observations. That could easily be two weeks. Now, as in all cases, this isn't the only case you've got.

Question:
So you're working on other cases at the same time?

Answer:
Yes. Especially on Indian treaty fishing rights cases, which for reasons we can discuss later, those issues all arise at the same time. Anyway, I made recommendations that we meet at a neutral site, away from the island itself, and away from the reservation itself. I asked the sheriff if we could use the sheriff's conference room in the city. I explored that possibility with him, but there would be no question about whether we could access it or not, he was very cooperative. He was very anxious to get this issue settled because he didn't know how to handle it himself. He didn't know what the law was, and if we could work things out so that he's not being called with expectations it would be all for the better. In fact, his legal counsel was even made available to me.

Question:
Were all the parties eager to go to the table?

Answer:
Not eager, but willing. As I recall, one being adamant, they were interested in trying to come up with some answer to this so it would end.

Question:
Did you help the parties prioritize their issues in any way, or help them with their presentation? There was quite a long list on both sides, so did you reformulate them in any way?

Answer:
I would list them and I might rephrase them in some way to make them clearer.

Question:
You didn't make any assessment of what the most important issues were, and which was next?

Answer:
No. I would set the agenda for the negotiations themselves. That's not the first meeting though. The first meeting in the sheriff's office conference room was where they would meet each other face to face for the first time. There was about a dozen people there. The CRS guidelines for mediation would've been explained in detail when I made the recommendation for mediation. I urged them to discuss things, and I gave them a list of about a dozen to fifteen points. These were really my version of CRS mediation guidelines or conditions. I would answer any questions they might have on that. It would've been the time prior to that first meeting when I would've pointed out to the home owners, "There needs to be some kind of entity that the tribe can deal with, who do you want to be? Can we identify you as a particular group?" As I recall, the minister was chosen. They chose their own people, although I had probably been responsible for identifying those who were interested and urging. I frankly do not recall offhand if I met with them separately, prior to the first meeting. I would have met with two or three of them to explain the guidelines. But at any rate, by the time they got to the sheriff's office, they would've known what the guidelines were, and then in that first session, I would've explained what can be expected. One, we'd go over the procedures and the guidelines. I would repeat what I had said before, and hopefully I'm still consistent. I would answer questions they have. Now they know that the others know that they don't talk to the press. I ask them "Do you agree to these terms?" The others hear them say "yes" and vice versa. That's sort of the basic, the bedrock for the mediation has been laid at that point. No discussion of issues, background, or anything like that.

Question:
Are the parties able to give input as to how you're going to run the mediation session, or are you telling them?

Answer:
Not much room for that. If I am to be the mediator here, I am bound by my agency to conduct mediation along these lines. In that case I don't think I would get a challenge to that. Of course there are introductions. People were meeting each other for the first time in many cases. Usually, they're sitting on opposite sides of the tables. In those days, Henry Kissinger was running around working out the shape of the table and all that. I never bothered about any of that.

Question:
What did you do to open up the line of communication?

Answer:
They ask questions, and they get the answers. The second session was where we would begin the process of problem identification. And at this point, no discussion shall be conducted about answers or solutions to any of these. That's something else that will happen later. What we want now is a free and frank exchange of ideas from both sides. Then I would invite, "Would you like to start off and list your issues?" They've given them to me individually. They would list the issues, one by one. A certain amount of clarification would begin to be taking place, understanding of not only what, but why they're upset. The tribal leadership had never heard of these tribal fishermen defecating in somebody's front yard in front of children, this was outrageous, and that sort of thing. A certain amount of clarification and explanation began to take place.

Question:
Were all of those things considered factual information, or were any of those issues ever challenged?

Answer:
Oh yes. But I would've stated in the beginning that these are perceptions by the people on this side of the table and it's important for you to not only know what happened, but to hear these perceptions and try to understand them.

Question:
Heidi asked you a little while ago about helping the groups prioritize. During this initial meeting, or the second meeting where parties are expressing themselves, do you allow them to express themselves in the language and the tone that they choose, or do you try to coach them to express themselves in a certain way?

Answer:
You've asked several questions. One, the main thing we need to get is a free and frank exchange of ideas. This can be brutal at times. I've had a mayor walk out of a meeting and I had to chase him and say, "This is what we've got to have, get all the problems out here on the table now. Whatever way it takes. We should be understanding, and it may hurt, but it's much more important that we be frank and talk about it, rather than lay only part of the issues out and still have other issues, concerns, or problems. This is our chance to deal with them." There would be some opportunity for going into the background of these issues, too. For example, the disenfranchisement of Indians and violation of treaties, there was at least some allusion to that. It's important to Native Americans that this be in the background of the record, even though it may not be dealt with in detail. In any case, if there's time that day for the other side to give it's listing of issues and concerns, and what and why, then we would go into that. If at the first session problem identification was not completed by one of the parties, then we would pick it up at the next session. All of one side identified it's problems in their entirety, and then the other one would have it's opportunity to give it's side. And to a certain extent, of course, answers to questions or perceptions would be given.

Question:
So I gather that if one side, like the Native Americans, accuses the other side of doing something, you hold off before the landowner makes a rebuttal statement.

Answer:
The other party is not expected to give any answer to what's being said by the other party.

Question:
Did you ever have a problem where people wanted to rebut? Did you have to control that?

Answer:
I'm sure I did. I can't remember specifically.

Question:
How would you handle that?

Answer:
Essentially, after making some kind of a statement, saying, "Okay, you will have an opportunity to answer this a little bit later. Just hold off. The important thing is to get this out, and then we want you to give your side of this."

Question:
Did you ever find yourself assisting one party to try to understand the other party's position?

Answer:
I think it's the role of the mediator to restate for purposes of clarification. Sometimes, it's needed to clarify, and even, "Is this what you're saying?"

Question:
Did that seem to help, or were there times when the party who was speaking said, "No, that's not what we mean?"

Answer:
Oh, I'm sure that happened. Heck, I'm a non-Indian and have no background. I didn't even know what they were talking about when I first got the complaint in this. You know what the title to the case is that I wrote on the file? Beach standing Indian's complaint. Later on, that didn't mean a thing. What's a beach standing Indian? But they were talking about Indians who were standing on the waterfront fishing. So I had to learn what a meander line was, and that sort of thing. They had to explain it to me before I could really go anywhere with it.

Question:
Did you do anything to try to diminish tensions between parties?

Answer:
As I had mentioned earlier, at times it's all you can do to keep them in the same room. I want them to be frank, I want to be in communication, and then frank communication, I'm not nearly as worried at that stage about the feelings of each other. I think it's more important to be frank.

Question:
Once you get past the sharing stage, if that's what you want to call it, what's the next phase of the process?

Answer:
I wouldn't call it sharing, but explanation of our concerns, our issues, our complaints. That holds a little different connotation than my sharing these concerns with you.

Question:
Okay. So what's the next phase of the process?

Answer:
After the complaints have all been laid on the table, and there has been clarification about the complaint and the background when we all agree that we've disclosed everything that's significant, then okay, we close this off. We begin the process of developing solutions. What are the answers? What are the approaches that need to be made to these questions? Here, the mediator plays the role of selecting what should be dealt with first. The question always arises, should we deal with the hard ones first, or the easy ones? If we can get agreement on the easy ones, maybe we can develop an approach to the hard ones. But not the reverse. Some people say if you answer the hard ones, everything else will fall into place. I think that's completely erroneous.

Question:
Did you perceive all the parties to be on the same level playing field, or did you find that there's one party that had significantly more power?

Answer:
There were different kinds of power. white public opinion would have been a factor in the background of the landowners, and I'm sure that the Native Americans, the tribal leaders, were very much aware of that. One of the things they were concerned about was what Congress would ultimately do.

Question:
The tribal leaders?

Answer:
Yes. Not in this particular case, but I think in Indian country, in general. Treaties can be changed by Congressional action. The courts can give definition to treaties and that sort of thing, I think the thing in the background that's rarely articulated is this fear of what Congress will do about, in this case, these kinds of treaty rights and private property rights. Therefore, white public opinion, once this is all out in the open arena, could generate a lot of feelings.

Question:
So does that threat influence the Native Americans to not push as hard?

Answer:
It would probably have some influence along those lines. It wouldn't be specific, but it's a restraining influence. I've never heard it put just this way, but that's my interpretation.

Question:
How did you get the parties to come up with solutions? Did you have them brainstorm ideas?

Answer:
I would arrange the order that we bring things up. What can be done about this issue, and then this one, that sort of thing. We'd go down some of the list. When difficult issues are encountered, there would be an impasse. I had a strong belief in the assignment of joint committees, say there's two people that had strong feelings on an issue. I would go through the Chair, to recommend, "What would you think of appointing two people from your side, and two people from the other side to meet tonight together? Maybe they could come up with a joint approach to this issue for recommendation in the morning?" That would be one way of trying to get into greater depth of some of the issues.

Question:
Would you work with that small group?

Answer:
I might, or I may not. I'd meet with them in the morning before the general session began, I would arrange to meet with them, and see "What did you come up with?" That way I would know what to expect. I'd want to know if any joint proposal had evolved overnight.

Question:
So did you rely on the parties to generate the solutions?

Answer:
If I had any thoughts about what would work, I don't feel that I can't make any recommendations. I think it's the responsibility of the mediator. From what's been placed on the table here, if I understand what you're saying, would this meet your concerns?

Question:
During this specific example, did you find any of the parties came to the table just to give lip service? They really weren't being forthright?

Answer:
Not in this particular case. It's happened in other cases.

Question:
I just wanted to go back to the power disparity between the groups. You say that it occurs on different levels. I wanted to know, what did you do to equal the power, keeping in mind the Indian tribe has Congressional concerns?

Answer:
That's a very good question. Back in my assessment, I would have made a judgment whether or not mediation was appropriate here. Mediation would only be appropriate between approximate equals. In other words, I never would have recommended to either of the parties that they go into mediation if there wasn't some broad semblance of equality. You don't get very far if you have unequals, or obvious gross inequality. It's unfair to involve the weaker party, no matter who they are.

Question:
So they're relatively the same power. Did you have to do anything extra, providing technical assistance for one group that you didn't provide to another group?

Answer:
I don't recall. I might have explained to some of the landowners something about the Bolt decision, that sort of thing. But everybody knows I'm not an attorney.

Question:
Did your impartiality become an issue in this case at all?

Answer:
Not an open issue. It may have been suspected, but it was never communicated to me as I remember.

Question:
Did you have any impasses during this case?

Answer:
I don't recall, we were able to move along down the list of issues pretty well, and the use of the joint committee was really our breakthrough.

Question:
How long and how many people were at these sessions at the same time?

Answer:
I think that first session many have been about a dozen. At subsequent sessions, I'd say we always had eight or ten.

Question:
And each side had one primary spokesperson?

Answer:
Well, a leader, but not necessarily always on the same subject. They might indicate today, "John will explain why boating equipment has to be left on the island, because he is one of the fishermen involved in some particular aspect of it. He's well versed." The spokesperson shifted from issues to issues.

Question:
Was there ever any problem, conflict, or disagreement within one side? Landowners not being able to agree on what they are going to present, or the Native Americans for that matter. Were there internal conflicts as well as external?

Answer:
I can't remember anything specifically, but whenever a party lacks unity around a key issue, as we all know, real negotiation stops at that point until it's sorted out because they're not going to deal with those issues openly in front of the other parties, so I always call a recess. Then I speak to those who are experiencing this kind of problem. They would go into a caucus in private and see if they could work it out, because I don't think we could move forward if there's an issue. But as I said, I don't recall either of the parties having a problem in this particular case.

Question:
You told me a little earlier about how you build trust between yourself and various parties. What specifically are you able to do to gain trust between the parties, if anything?

Answer:
There's certainly the assignment of particular tasks to joint committees. That builds trust and working relationships between those involved in that. When they come back in with an agreed upon, joint position, then that's communicated to the other. I don't know that I do anything specific.

Question:
Those tasks are interesting though, so you come up with those on your own?

Answer:
Yes. It may be very obvious. I look for opportunities to assign a joint committee to work on this, especially overnight.

Question:
Did you bring any outside resources in to help resolve this conflict, like an expert on treaties, or the sheriff? Was there any outsider that you brought in to help with this?

Answer:
Yes. The North West Indian Fishers Commission, which is an intertribal organization that coordinates tribal positions, operations, fisheries, hatcheries and so on. I brought a representative from that group in with the consent of all the parties. I thought this was a person whose organization would have some insights into some of this.

Question:
So were they used as experts to suggest solutions?

Answer:
I don't remember specifically. There would probably have been a valuable use of such a resource. I also had the Washington State Department of Fisheries Enforcement there. It was a special patrol unit within the State Department of Fisheries that had a specific area of interest in these issues. They were involved as well. Usually, I try to have everybody start off together rather than calling people in. I know that I had the North West Indian Fishers Commission, State Department of Fisheries, the sheriff's office, I think all of those may have been involved from the beginning. Although they're not parties to the issues, they would have a role, they would have information that might be helpful. For their own policies, they needed to know what was going on. Hopefully they would be supportive of the implementation that was needed. Thirdly, they would be a part of the solutions involved in the implementation, not just support it. They were involved in some of these things. We never did go into who's allowed to be in the room as part of ground rules.

Question:
Let's talk about that.

Answer:
My recommendation was four to six representatives would be at the table for each side, no less than four, maybe six or eight would be an ideal number. For the members of your team, you need a chair person, a spokesperson, and somebody to take notes for you. Don't depend on notes from me or the other party, you need to keep your own notes. Also, there needs to be somebody that I can contact readily to notify when meetings will be a link to your team. That's the negotiating team. Observers are there, those who have an interest in what's going on and who need to know because they could have a role in making or breaking the agreement after it's been developed, after the negotiations are over. There may be a need for other persons, or representatives from other entities to have an understanding of what's going on here, because of the potential helpful role they might play later if they have an understanding. Resource people or technical assistance people are examples. In this case, I'm not sure whether there were observers or technical assistance persons, but they probably played both roles, these three outside agencies.

Question:
Did you let them choose who they thought would be best for those roles, or did you make suggestions?

Answer:
I probably would make recommendations. They would tell me, "it would be good if the North West Indian Fishers Commission had somebody here," but I'd try to get them in from the beginning so that nobody's joining in afterwards, which is always destructive to the process.

Question:
Did any of the parties ever want to include someone that you felt would create more tension or wouldn't help resolve the conflict?

Answer:
Not in this particular case, no. Others, yes.

Question:
Did you make an effort to make sure the negotiating team on each side was the same size?

Answer:
No. Who will participate is sorted out at the beginning. If you're willing to come to the table, it's whoever they determine they want to have, and vice versa.

Question:
Do you insist that the same people stay at the table the whole time to prevent changing of the guard?

Answer:
If at all possible. One of the points in the recommendations is giving priority and importance to this, whenever there's a meeting, you will be there. Of course that never is 100%, but I ask them to prioritize participation in this, because it is important.

Question:
In this particular case did you ever have a problem maintaining your objectivity or impartiality?

Answer:
I'm sure I did.

Question:
Do you remember specifically on what issues?

Answer:
Not offhand, I just sit there and bite my tongue. As I point out to them, in the role of the mediator, I may have some feelings, I may have some strong feelings about the right and wrong of what one side is doing. If I state what that is and act in such a way in chairing these sessions, if I seem to be favoring one side or the other, then the other side has one more person on their side and there's no mediator. Therefore, regardless of my feelings, I am of use only if I try to be as objective as possible, and my personal feelings don't have anything to do with it.

Question:
Did any of the parties ask you to do something that you were not able to do?

Answer:
I don't recall offhand. If they wanted me to meet with them, I made sure the other side knew I was meeting with them. I offered to meet with them if they wanted to, that sort of thing. I don't recall anything that I couldn't do, I tried to accommodate their needs as much as possible. It's a part of building trust over a number of meetings, when they would realize that I was communicating what I was doing with the other side. That's part of the trust building process.

Question:
How did you deal with confidentiality, in the context of negotiations?

Answer:
As part of the ground rules, this would be what we would talk about. "If anybody feels that they cannot make a statement unless there's an assurance of confidentiality, I think we ought to respect that, to accept it as confidential and not to be repeated outside this room by anybody here." That's going to sound real hollow to people who don't trust them anyway, "I discourage the use of confidentiality, because there is a need for each of the parties during the negotiations to keep their constituencies generally informed about what's happening inside. Because they're not represented there, they need to know. Ultimately, they will presumably be involved and approve or disapprove of what you do, what we do." So I say, "Don't tie your hands by using confidentiality more than what is absolutely necessary. Sometimes there maybe a need for it, in which case, I think we should be willing to give our word and we will regard it as confidential, not to be repeated."

Question:
How did you deal with the media?

Answer:
It's a hot potato. In this case, the media had no awareness about what we were doing, and I certainly didn't go to them. I point out to them that the Community Relations Service guidelines spell out how to deal with media. This is helpful to me. It's not my position, it's the agencies position. If you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. Nobody initiates any contact with any representative of the TV, radio, or print media. Secondly, if you are approached by a representative of the media, you have to commit yourself and refer them to the mediator. When a media person contacts me, I may give them an explanation of the process that we're going through, I may make some general statements about the progress that's taking place, but I won't be discussing specific details about what we're doing inside. There will be a time for that later. Going to the other item in the guidelines, which are at the conclusion of the mediation assuming that we have an agreement, then I will arrange for a press conference to be held and we will have each of the parties represented with the spokespersons. Then, I will explain to the media what we've done, the process that we've gone through, and that this is the result of that mediation. I'd hand them copies of the agreement, which would have needed to have been approved by that point. That's not always possible. For example, a board of education has to meet in public, so everybody knows what they're doing, so you kind of do the mediation at the same time. But you would distribute copies of the written signed agreement. The policy on media relations no longer applies and the representative of each of the parties is here, and the media is free to ask them any questions. It's part of the ceremony, if you can call it that. We might have the signing of the documents by the representatives. Hopefully, there will be publicity around the solutions side.

Question:
Was there media presence at this signing?

Answer:
No. I don't think the media would've cared. They had not heard of this, and it was not my role to inform them of this. At least at this point, we made our breakthroughs and made an eight point agreement. At the conclusion, after it was signed, it had to be taken to the three tribal counsels, and signed off by each of them. We negotiated through the day as I recall, and then had to take it to the tribal counsels that night, and once we got the tribal chairperson's name on all the documents, then it was my job to take copies of the agreement to the media. So, I spent the rest of the night, literally, taking copies to television stations, to radio stations and to the print media in Seattle. The results of all that effort was one little blurb about an inch long in the Tacoma paper. Good news is no news.

Question:
Do you remember the points of the agreement?

Answer:
One. We recognized the Indian treaty and their usual custom fishing areas, and their right to access waters by passing through other waters for fishing. Some such verbiage. They have a right to pass through and use private property in order to exercise that right. A major, major concession was the recognition of those rights. But that was worked out in a joint committee. The tribal attorney in this case, who's a non-Indian, young man, was probably crucial in the working and persuading. He probably said something like "If you will give this recognition, I think in exchange, we can get to these other concerns that you have addressed."

Question:
What was given in exchange?

Answer:
All of this. There was a listing of procedures. All nets shall be lit at all times, they shall be placed so as to provide clear navigation channels in and out of the bay. There will be no loud playing of radios or excessive noise while fisherman are involved in fishing. There were a number of things like that, which addressed these specific concerns that had been raised. The Tribal Fisheries Patrol was a key part. They had one large boat with a sergeant in charge of it, who was a highly respected man, a Chippewa. He was from another part of the country, and he was highly respected, had a lot of law enforcement experience, and outside of tribal enforcement. During fishing, operations are taking place, during the fishing season, the Fishers Enforcement Patrol will regularly visit these areas and will ensure that all fishermen have copies of this agreement and that they will have authority to lift nets that are improperly placed and so on. So there was an enforcement procedure. And I believe that was it. These agreements are permanent. They'll last forever. It doesn't terminate at a certain point. The last item in the agreement would be that the mediator will arrange for a meeting three months from now for the purpose of reviewing implementation of the agreements. Secondly, for the purpose of addressing new issues related to this general area that may have arisen, that are not addressed specifically in the terms of the agreement. Thirdly, and this is by far the most important, I could renew working relationships. Now, I don't recall if I said all of that on the first case, because that was a growing awareness. But from that point on, every mediation agreement, I would try to persuade them to agree to that. This may have been where I first used that. What came out of this was, the time of the next meeting was after the fishing season had been completed. In the meantime, there was a procedure for a complaint channel, a number at the Fisheries Patrol Office, and this is the name of the person who's in charge of it. Call, and he will respond to calls from property owners. That was a commitment that he had made. He must have been invited into the meeting to be introduced and so on, a very attractive person and a lot of this was successful because of him. He could be depended on to come, and he did. The provision for the follow-up meeting was at the conclusion of the fishing season, which would be over in October or something like that. There's various runs of salmon, I had to learn all this. "When the last run has run then the mediator will reconvene the parties and we'll review the implementation of the agreement." And at that point, we arranged for, prior to the beginning of the next season, which would be about August or September, we'll meet again and be sure that we have the right phone numbers and any changes that have taken up. All these things that the Indians have little knowledge of, but that was provided for. That went on for several years, that kind of meeting.

Question:
With you involved?

Answer:
I was for the first year or so, but we would meet at the sheriff's Marine Patrol Office, the precinct where they operated out of. And I'd work out of the role of mediator and turn it over to the sergeant in charge of the Marine Patrol. He'd have the responsibility for contacting the parties to be convened, and maybe I would attend, maybe I wouldn't. But I was trying to get out of their dependence on me. There were various problems that came up later, but that was the process and dynamics that went into that case. That was my first fishing rights case. But it wasn't the last. Based on that, one of the three tribes called me and said, "We've got problems over here in this other location near Olympia." And they were the only ones with treaty rights there. In response to their request, I went over there. In this case, there was a community meeting of property owners, a middle class grouping of people and a lot of university professors. All in this upscale waterfront house, with hors devours served and everything else. I had called and asked if I could attend this meeting. I walked into a hornet's nest. I knew it was. But I had to talk my way through it and get them into committing themselves to mediation all in that one night, because I had them all together. That was the only chance I had.

Question:
What kinds of things were you saying to try to persuade them?

Answer:
Well, "what's the alternatives?" Again, it was chasing Indians off of their waterfront, out of their front yards. "This happened over at the other island. It was violent over there, and the waterfront was beginning to be armed, and we could see where it was going. We got together in mediation and worked these things out. Here's a copy of the agreement." I used that Squackson Island agreement all over Puget Sound.

Question:
So you were able to take it from one place to another?

Answer:
Oh yeah. This is the model, and they didn't have any other models for this kind of an issue. We found that there were confrontations occurring, in all sorts of places, like the Olympia case. It never made the media, but a lot of people were upset and irate. We were able to, in that case, use the local college. It was a neutral site, not one of their homes, and not over at the tribal center, but over in this conference room at the local university. We worked out the same, basic agreement.

Answer:
That was my question. Were these similar?

Question:
Yes, and then the Nesquallas had that problem over in Olympia, where there was another place on the Nesqualli River that flows on the reservation, but through privately owned property of the Mormon church. They had a number of acres right on the river that were for sportsman's events. Their people came to fish there, legally and so on, from maybe Seattle. There was also a supply center. They stockpiled supplies in a building on this property. They keep food for a year in advance. Anyway, this is where clothing was stockpiled, and poor Mormons, I gather, could come and get needed supplies. But there was a gate, which took a magnetic card for it to slide back and let you in, otherwise it was all barred off. This was a prime fishing area on the Nesqualli River. "Every time we come there, that gate's locked. And we can't get in." You can imagine. I don't remember specifics besides that. But we worked out a very simplistic approach as compared with these others. But again, we secured the recognition of the right of access through that gate, through the private property, over to the waterfront during fishing season. And of course, one magnetic card was given to the Fisheries Chairperson, and of course that card got lost and we can't get through. That's not an objective statement to make, but there were problems with keeping up with that card, and then there were some problems involving the other tribe, that we were able to help. They had treaty rights issues on another island. The teamsters union had a recreation property, a very tough outfit. We met in the National Marine Fisheries office in the Olympia area, a neutral location, non-tribal and not a teamsters union office. And again, using the basic model that we had developed on Squackson Island for this as well, that is access to this property owner and this caretaker down there who was a pretty tough person. He was retired from truck driving, I guess, to take care of this recreation property. He had been accused of not allowing tribal members to fish along their waterfront. Then there was another tribe with the same issues. One was in the town of Stillicum. They had a private park which is on the tribal land. It was on an inlet, and they had wanted it used as a custom fishing area, and this park was on a little point that had often been used for fishing, and they objected to access through their land. There was no parking here, and they built campfires where they were camping out and so on. That kind of usage that was illegal for citizens, but the Indians did use it in this way. We were able to work out that, again, pulling in State Department of Fisheries. See, they took it as a mission. They had begun to catch the significance of what they were doing. We were pioneering some area here that nobody's done before. But anyway, I had an afternoon mediation and still looked in on the evening negotiations up in Olympia and I had other casework besides just this. And I remember once I was trying to address some tribal issues over in Washington and in Northern Idaho and getting from this area to there, I was really stretched thin. So one approach that I used, when it came to the point of having to reconvene the parties to review their issues at the conclusion of this fishing season. It was maybe two years later the Nesqualla tribe hosted a big salmon bake for all of the parties involved and we must have been 50 people in the same room, and each group would come forward and make the presentation of what their problems were, what the arrangements were for the coming season, and how things were working out for them. One after another, we heard from these various communities. It must have been about five different mediation groups or joint committees from the parties, and some of them involved in more than one case, of course. But we came up, and so we reviewed them all at the same time, and low and behold, I did some promotion of this with the media, and nobody showed up except for one Seattle TV Station, and they documented the whole thing. I've got a tape of this news coverage, not of the whole event. That was the only time I was able to get them all together in that fashion, but it was just a matter of, I can't handle all this. I've had too many balls in the air and had to get them all together. The spirit that came out of that, and the hospitality of the Nesquallas hosting this wonderful Salmon Bake, was just icing on the cake. It really had a very positive effect.

Question:
We talked yesterday about the case where the Native American group called you, and that's how the case got started. Did you ever go into a situation where you identified the problem without having somebody call you first? So you were faced with a decision of how do I get in?

Answer:
Yes.

Question:
How do you deal with that?

Answer:
It occurred to me last night, that there's one aspect immediately following the mediation at this island case that I thought was significant. It was the way the announcement was made to the community. I thought it was unique. The parties, after the mediation, and the pastor of the United Church of Christ suggested that we have an open house at his church and invited everybody from the community. This would be the white community and the non-Indian community, that's where the concerns were. They were all supportive that the community go along with this. Anyway, we had an open church a few days after the agreement was signed and had a very good turnout in terms of attendance. The procedure that we went through was that the key persons on both sides had a meeting together, had an explanation of what the grievance was, and people could ask questions and so on. After that, it became very informal and they had cake and coffee and that sort of thing and broke up into small groups and there were Indian tribal members chatting with residents and vice versa for the first time really, especially those who were most concerned about what had been happening. I happened to notice that there was one person, shall we say Subject A? If you remember, he was one of the person's who had more complaints about this person than anyone else that I came across. I couldn't help but notice that he was off in a corner with three men standing around him, and he was talking with them and showing them something. I couldn't see what it was and I had to look over his shoulder. This was a copy of the Bolt decision that he had somehow gotten a hold of. And it was all underlined with these parts and he was saying, you see, they have a right to come under our property. Now that is just as significant a part of mediation I think as the negotiations at a table. What the people at the table do at the wake of it. They've got the job of convincing their constituencies. We must never lose sight of that, empowering those people and each side needs to be aware of those needs, it works both ways. Later on, this same individual was sitting on his porch and noticed across a neck of the lake a tribal fisherman over there, somebody on the dock who looked like they were having some kind of problems, he couldn't tell what it was. This guy wasn't young and he wasn't in good health, but he gets in his rowboat, rows as fast as he can clear across the bay, and intervenes and sorts it out and works out whatever the problem was. That again is involvement in this way. At the subsequent meetings, before the next season started, those became very important people to tell their experiences and reinforce this kind of positive action. As they looked forward to relating this, they became a reference group of those involved in the review of their decisions. The persons involved in those joint meetings later moved on, tribal leadership changed and so on. Tribal Fisherman Patrol chief became police chief in another reservation. These follow up meetings helped to perpetuate the original understandings and most importantly working relationships, regardless of what's on paper. That's what producing the paper and producing the agreements created, working relationships. Those small joint committees focused on a purpose. That's what creates the working relationships. In other words, mediation sessions are just the beginning. There were people in CRS, when I would relate stories like this, who would say, "Oh no, that's not mediation. When you finish up your mediation sessions, signed, you're out of there and that's it." That's a philosophy practice. To me, I think it's the human relations, in addition to the human rights involved, they're equally important.

Question:
Would that be how you measured your success while you were at CRS, that human relationship being developed between parties?

Answer:
Well, I think that was an important aspect that I discovered.

Question:
What other gauges do you use to measure whether or not you were successful?

Answer:
I'd say the length of time that the agreement holds up. That's one thing, and secondly, whether the group that I worked with carries on and addresses other similar questions and expands the scope that I think is important, beyond the negotiating table.

Question:
Do you monitor that continuing effort?

Answer:
As needed. But I'm always looking for ways to encourage them to continue on, while at the same time, making them less dependent on me. There's another case that's a good example of this that is related to law enforcement. You've probably hit your quota on law enforcement cases. But there's good examples of what we're talking about.

Question:
Give us an overview.

Answer:
There was a young black man, 22 years of age, shot and killed by a police marksman after he was a barricaded suspect in an apartment complex. This was in Anchorage. The reaction of the African-American community was very predictable. Outrage, and so on. As often happens, there are other incidents that have occurred that are brought to mind, and the Alaskan community had similar issues. "Hey, this happened to us too." Local human rights commissions held a community meeting, and as I understand it, pretty well lost control. The outrage was so strong that they were not able to provide any effective leadership and CRS came in a little bit later. This was going to be ongoing, and we helped to organize community representatives of a number of groups that had become involved into a community coalition: The Native Alaskan Organization, the statewide organization, the local Native Alaskan Organization, the NAACP, and the Black Leadership Conference. After the assessment recommended mediation with the police department, the police chief agreed to enter into mediation, we met in a federal building in a little auditorium where eventually we were able to hammer out a fourteen point agreement. This took maybe eight sessions. We had two sessions that first week and came back the next week. It made some real breakthroughs. That's the first time, I'm aware of, that a firearms policy of a police department was revised by mediation agreement. Use of deadly force was sharply curtailed to a defense-only policy, which was certainly not the standard in that time. Among other things, we found a graduate student of criminology, who was unemployed, living out in the community. We brought her in, and created a position for her, because we needed that influence. It was virtually an all white department, too. The things that were dealt with in the agreement: firearms policy was number one, of course: training black and Native American leadership; and cultural awareness training, both in service and in the local police academy. It was affirmative action. Not only recruiting, the community agreed to assist in promoting careers in the department, and agents from the community. There were promotions for those who worked within. They established a community relations unit more or less around the criminologist, although she wasn't a sworn officer. Those were the regular kinds of elements of an agreement. In the event of any racially based crisis, the members in the negotiating teams would establish communication. In other words, either could initiate contact and there were co-chair persons I believe, and either of them could initiate a joint meeting to ensure communication and to secure factual information over police reports so that they could effectively address the issues involved. So that grievance channel was established. Lastly was the review of the agreement. In three months the mediator will return. This time, I learned my lesson and was trying to get it incorporated in all of the agreements. Everybody agreed to that. Every three months, for about three quarters, I would go back and convene such a meeting. But the participants said, "Can you come back next month?" I had to say, "My budget won't allow me to travel every month up here, why don't you meet on your own? You've got two co-chairs." That was fine. They began to meet every month, I was overjoyed at this, it was succeeding. They said, "What about the Koreans, the Korean Human Rights Committee? They've had a lot of problems- accusations of drug dealing and so on." LULAC is here, so they expanded it to involve these other organizations that weren't involved on the initial negotiating team. Then a black sergeant had soldiers at the local military base bring in some of them dressed as Klansmen, and burn a cross on the door in the barracks of a black sergeant, trying to scare him, 'playing a prank.' This was publicized and the community, the black community in particular, was outraged. Nobody had a channel, a line, out to Ft. Richardson, and they weren't involved and the community was all uptight. So I went out and talked with the Marshall, and it happened to be that he was from Anniston, Alabama, right next to where I was raised in Gaston. Anyway, I got him to become involved as a member of this committee, and also, with the permission of the others, invited the US Attorney. But he sent an assistant. The FBI agent in charge was very interested and she went out. I spoke to her and she became involved and she had some very good ideas and suggestions, a very effective member of this group. So this Anchorage Police Minority Community Relations Task Force, and also the local Human Rights Commission, under a new director, became involved. It's still going on, ten years later. It took on a life of its own and it is the primary channel for police grievances as it relates to any of the minority communities, and has taken on a wide range of projects over these years. But that came out of a mediation agreement. And at first, I would start out and remind them, "This is the agreement, let's see how the implementation is going after about a year of this." They say, "Why do we have to start way back there?" And the mediation agreement was laid aside.

Question:
What did they do about the cross burning?

Answer:
Oh, I think they had a Court Marshall. They identified the perpetrators, and as I recall, they were Court Marshaled, disciplined, and possibly one person was dishonorably discharged. I vaguely remember this. It was quite a few years ago. But that received national publicity.

Question:
How did you get involved with it initially?

Answer:
Primarily, we were following it through the media. But there were good relations with the NAACP. There had been for years prior to this period. Oh, and we had good relations with all of the people involved. There was another CRS person who did the initial response and the initial assessment, and I came in as the mediator. But it was only after the local Human Rights Commission had been unable to address the issues that we became involved.

Question:
So generally speaking, how did you typically get involved in the cases? Was it something that you were assigned, or did you look through the media and seek out this?

Answer:
Contacts or media, people, parties who were involved, we maintained relationships with minority leadership and played police officials, school officials, your routine. Oh, and we would also subscribe to, in this case, the Anchorage and Fairbanks papers.

Question:
So you routinely called school officials and police officials and say, "How are things going?"

Answer:
Not so much call up, but next time we're up there on another case, for example, always take advantage of being there to contact or to meet with some of these people. And sometimes we hadn't been in there, and no cases were being brought to our attention.

Question:
Would you ever just show up unannounced?

Answer:
Yes, but that's generally not a good way to go.

Question:
What would be the reasons why you would just show up, versus call?

Answer:
A crisis situation, a serious situation where we just had to drop things and go. Then you were seen to be showing up, as you put it. But we were just getting there quickly as we could and could not establish contact. That is always less desirable for us. I was mediating a Bowhead whales issues up in Port Barra, in the Arctic, and a serious incident had occurred and I took off up there and finally got in. I remember, right after I arrived, one of the Native Alaskan local leaders was coming out of the one general store that is in Barra, and I was coming in and bumped into him. I think he'd been enjoying the evening a little bit before he went into the store, let's put it that way. But he became almost irate that I had come without having contacted him. He was not the top leader.

Question:
He knew who you were?

Answer:
Oh yeah. We had done work together. I had worked with him. And I hadn't told him that I was coming this time. I didn't have a chance to. So that's a downside. You try to notify people that you're coming and will be involved, "Can I see you?"

Question:
Were there any other reasons why you wouldn't inform a party other than just time constraints?

Answer:
Well, there are plenty of communities where we would not know who to contact, smaller rural areas. We may not know anybody there, or have a contact. So you just show up. You try to contact somebody who does know the community, or that had been through there, or the next community over. "Can you put me in touch with somebody there?" But, again, you don't always have the luxury of making that many phone calls. And at some point, you've got to go, and you will end up going unannounced. And in rural areas, that's not unusual. Sometimes that works against you, but other times, people are glad to see you.

Question:
So who are you looking for once you get there? Who are you looking for first?

Answer:
The people that call me, usually, just to get that out of the way. I usually try to respond to whoever calls and try to make contact with them first.

Question:
And the cases where you are not called and don't have a contact, who are you looking for and what's your procedure at that point?

Answer:
Well, I call somebody that I have a relationship within the next community over, or somebody who works that area.

Question:
Do you try to go to the minority community first, or the white community first?

Answer:
Generally the minority community because, in part, they're the ones who usually would have called, rather than say police chiefs, as an example. The Department of Justice is the last kind of agency that they would like to see there. They become generally very defensive as soon as you say Department of Justice. They don't hear Community Relations Service.

Question:
Have you ever had a situation where the state police, or the authority does not want you involved?

Answer:
Oh, there are degrees of cooperation. Some is very superficial kind of cooperation, such as not having time to meet with you, they have to handle another issue, or they have to go out of town.

Question:
What do you do then?

Answer:
What do I do then? I work down. If I can't meet with person A, then I go to person B. In the case of say, a police chief, if there's a Community Relations Unit, and I know the officer there, I might go to that officer first, before going to the police chief. It's all according to what kind of rapport you have within that department or within that community. It's hard to generalize.

Question:
Can you recall any conflicts where neither of the parties wanted you to become involved?

Answer:
Not off-hand. I've had conflicts in which both parties initiate requests for assistance. That's the best of all worlds, of course. That's happened to me a couple of times. In Fairbanks, there was a school issue up there, and I had good working relationships. The school superintendent calls and, in this case, I believe it was the African American, and the NAACP leader, I believe, both called at the same time. And in Port Angeles, Washington, that happened once.

Question:
Does that make your job easier?

Answer:
Oh yeah, yeah. In other words, it's almost natural. You slide in and you have had established some kind of rapport there and they reach out for help and you're able to respond.

Question:
Did you always have a plan before you went on-site, or did you develop a plan or a goal after you arrived on-site?

Answer:
Usually you have a basic plan of assessments that you start with, the people who have the problem, and confirm what they are concerned about. And that's the beginning of that assessment, answering those basic questions that I had mentioned. This of course relates to both conciliation and mediation. Again, you're seeking to identify the issues and who the party's are, and what would it take to resolve the issues in their eyes. And getting that, you formulate your own conclusions and your own strategy, and then ultimately your recommendations.

Question:
Do the parties have an influence on that strategy?

Answer:
Oh yeah. What you feel like would work might be effective.

Question:
So did you see your role changing, case by case? Would you consider yourself to have the same role consistently?

Answer:
It's the similarity of issues and parties. With the Puget Sound Tribal fishing cases, my role became fairly consistent there, because on the tribal side, in a number of those cases, I was working with the same people. The fishery's chairperson, the fishery's patrol of the tribe. There was a different set of people on the community side, that is the residents side, in those issues. So basically, a very similar approach was made, and the tribal officials knew what to expect from me and had a successful experience in other cases, so I would probably play a very similar role.

Question:
If you had to characterize the role that you played in a case, would you characterize it as a conciliator, mediator, or a combination of both?

Answer:
Well, it'd be according to the case. Sometimes it was as a mediator, and sometimes as a conciliator. Some cases simply weren't appropriate for mediation. From 1984 on, I was doing less and less mediation and more and more conciliation, because of an area that I began to specialize in that was crucial.

Question:
What kind of cases aren't appropriate for mediation?

Answer:
Well, where you have one party that would be utterly unwilling to meet with any of them.

Question:
So then what do you do?

Answer:
You're involved in conciliation. It's not meetings as such.

Question:
Describe a typical kind of case. You said, "The kind of thing I was getting involved in." What was that thing?

Answer:
Let me answer you with this. In 1981, it was virtually all mediation, fishing rights issues and other Indian relation issues. But one day in November of 1981, I received a phone call from the NAACP president in Spokane, and she said, "There's a picture in today's newspaper of a big cross being burned with a bunch of men in uniforms and hoods all around the cross. It says it's the Old Hinge Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. It says, Aryan Nations. What's that?" I said, "Aryan what?" And I didn't know. So I go over and meet with her, and then I realize that I'm going to Coeur d'Alene to meet the undersheriff for the first time. He's looking for somebody like me, and I was looking for somebody like him. We worked very closely together. After a number of contacts, I realized that there needed to be an entity to countervail the influence of the Aryan Nations. They weren't interested in sitting down with a Jewish person, or a black person, or anything like that. But I began the process of identification, and I realized that the Spokane area had a minority community that was concerned about these activities. And the Jewish community was concerned about these activities. But there was no minority community, to speak of, in Coeur d'Alene, or in Northern Idaho. And so whatever was worked out would need to be worked out on the joint basis for both geographies. So I pulled together NAACP representatives from Spokane, and the one Jewish Rabbi serving that whole area, as well as the representative from the school superintendent's office, the prosecuting attorney, the US attorney, the police chief, and the sheriff of Spokane County. Also, we had the Methodist district superintendent and businessmen and the secretary of the bar association. And on the other side, that undersheriff in Northern Idaho, and the representatives from the police departments over there. There was one Jewish resident, but I couldn't find a black person at that point who lived in Coeur d'Alene. I found out later that there were several, but I couldn't find them. Oh, and the state's Human Rights Commission had an office there, so that director joined us and a United Church of Christ minister over in Coeur d'Alene. And we pulled them together, after a lot of discussion, I was the common link between all of them. They didn't know each other, even in Spokane. I was the convener. It was important that we stay together long enough to formulate a program and for me to get out of that role as quickly as possible. Because if anything's going to evolve here, the last thing that should be done is that this group was formed by the US Department of Justice on one hand, and secondly, somebody from Seattle. Those are the bad people. I mean, Seattle is in competition with Spokane. Seattleites don't understand people east of the mountains. But, in essence, what we did was form an ad-hoc organization, sponsor the first conference on hate groups and hate activity in the Northwest. TAPE CHANGE; QUESTION UNKNOWN

Answer:
Not directly. I had contact with Reverend Butler, the head of it. But he really wasn't interested in dealing with me in anyway over that. And that was it. And I don't think that there would be anybody in these organizations that would have any interest in meeting with him either. There was a two day seminar, it was statewide, Northern Idaho with the state of Washington. And at the end of my plan, we had already drawn up a constitution, by-laws for the Interstate Task Force on Human Rights. And that conference gave it legitimacy and we went from there to do a number of things in supporting each other in both areas.

Question:
So I gather you did a lot more of this sort of thing afterwards.

Answer:
Yeah, out of that model came the Interstate Task Force on Human rights that we eventually formed. Hate group activity began to manifest itself, cross-burning incidents, harassment, and organized activity, and this was before skinheads surfaced. We had Klan activity and Aryan activity and your Christian patriots and various assorted organizations that had not been present before, or known to be present. We became aware of the territorial imperative of these groups, they were organizing to form a state within a state. The Northwest Aryan Empire.

Question:
So what did these groups do to try to counter that?

Answer:
Well, every year, the World Aryan Congress met at Coeur d'Alene, out at Aryan Headquarters, seven miles North of Coeur d'Alene. You had up to three or four hundred people coming there. The Kootenai County Task Force on Human Rights, broke off from the Interstate Task Force, so you had two different groups, after a couple of years. They formed Human Rights Observances in the City Park downtown, with several thousand people in attendance, and greetings from the governors of Oregon and Washington. That was my job, to generate these. It was to say, the media was coming to cover the Aryans, that was news. So this was to say, in effect, that there are other people besides them, and we stand for human rights, fairness, and say yes to equity, and so on. But they took on a lot of different projects and programs. Then there were incidents in Coeur d'Alene, Pocatello, Boise, Portland, Seattle, and it was just cropping up all over the place. I pulled together about fourteen people from over in Spokane to sit down and consult together, these would be the NAACP regional president, Human Rights Commission Representative, and LULAC, and so on. But after we had this initial meeting, we then decided there was a need for more input. So we held a series of consultations over a year. First in Spokane, and then in Seattle, then in Portland, then in Coeur d'Alene, and then at the end of a year, formed the Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment. And that has now expanded to include Colorado. Surely you know this, or do you?

Question:
I don't.

Answer:
Oh. Well it's ten years old now, the Northwest Coalition. But it has representatives from the Governors' offices from each of the five original states that we had involved, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. It's a mix of officials and community leadership. The NAACP regional offices, and somebody from an Urban League, Latino organizations, one representative from a police organization in each state, a representative of the Governor's office in each state, a Human Rights Commission representative from each state, general local coalition organizational representatives from each state. This is on the Board of Directors. And we've held a full-time staff of five people. A foundation support of 265 organizations of different kinds, ranging from the police department to state departments of education, and Diocese. The local Methodist Church on Mercer Island, was the first church. That's where I lived. The annual Methodist conference, and even the Northwest Kite-Flyers organization. You don't have to be a civil rights organization to be concerned about these things. It is 265 organizations. But it's educational programs, conferences, and there's a big annual conference held in each of the three states annually. And then smaller conferences are supported. When an incident occurs, a team will be formed to go there and respond to the problem. I was the chair of the monitoring committee, which is the main role we had, and that was to document incidents. If we could document incidents, and show by compilation of credible data, that this number of incidents had occurred in this community. Or then over to the Northwest, so many homicides, kidnapping, all of the different forms of violence. We could persuade officials and public opinion that we have a problem. And that's what we did. We were doing bias-crime data collection on a five-state basis, way before the FBI started.

Question:
We, being CRS?

Answer:
No. No. The Northwest Coalition was involved in urging National Data Collection for some time before it became mandated by Congress. In fact, I'd done that kind of work in Alabama in the 1950's, state-wide.

Question:
Did you ever mediate a case between a known hate group and a minority group?

Answer:
I offered. If anyone wants to meet with the Aryans, or feel like it's useful for your purposes to meet with them, to communicate, to discuss anything with them, let me know and I'll see if I can arrange such. And nobody has ever requested a desire to do that.

Question:
I ask that question, because getting to the next question I wanted to ask you, when you're dealing with hate groups, how are you able to maintain your impartiality and objectivity at that particular point?

Answer:
Oh, with difficulty and with skepticism on the part of the hate groups.

Question:
And what did you do?

Answer:
Well, on Whitby Island, that is the site whereby the leader of the most violent terrorist group ever to form in the U.S., an off-shoot of the Aryan Nations, formed in Northeast Washington. There were about 22 people, primarily men, who assassinated Allenberg here in Denver, and other individuals. Some of the victims were their own members, who were thought to be informers. They tried to bomb the house of the head of the Northwest Coalition at one point, in Coeur d'Alene. The FBI, in 1984, was able to track that group down, and the leaders were tracked to Whitby Island. But they had several safe houses up there, right on the edge of the water. They were surrounded by several hundred law enforcement, and the leader of the group was killed. Now the Aryans and neo-Nazis go to the State park, which is almost adjacent to this site of his Martyrdom, as they put it. They hold services. Then, anti-neo-Nazi groups from Seattle and other places come to the site to protest their presence. A confrontation then develops and law enforcement's caught in the middle. From the beginning, I was involved in getting the State Park's people to arrange to meet with law enforcement and the leaders of the protest groups to meet and sort out ground rules. We discussed what could be expected from each, and that sort of thing. That doesn't really involve the neo-Nazis. But the neo-Nazis have a campsite that they usually camped in and people such as newspaper reporters, were filtering down into the campsite. So I went down and they were chasing them out. I recommended, "What we're trying to do is avoid violence in this case. This would play into their hands." But we urged them to talk with the leadership of the group there, who is an old time neo-Nazi. We urged him, "Why don't you go up there and set up a perimeter at this gate up here, at the top of the road, a hundred yards from where the campsite is and have somebody up there to meet whatever medial representatives come there and make a determination as to whether you want them down here in your campsite. The interview could be done up there, or just to decide whether or not you want to talk with them at all. " But, not to leave it wide open where conflicts were developing. A lot of confrontations were developing along that road. They thought that was a good idea, and followed that suggestion. In subsequent years, I would meet with the first arrivals at the campsite, and just establish rapport, as tenuous as it was. I was there in the event that some problems did arise, outside of demonstrations that were orderly and in the area, but not at their campsite. Things generally worked out very well.

Question:
Are there any other kinds of situations where mediation's not appropriate?

Answer:
I don't know. I think it's probably useful in more ways than are generally thought of. I think it can be used to provide leadership in a community. You may have incidents that are occurring in a community, where there's no specific party involved, but mediation would work rather than leaving it as strictly a law enforcement matter. There was one mediation case I had at an alcohol rehabilitation program. Unidentified persons were stoning and breaking windows out of this alcohol rehabilitation program, which was a state run program, but the community was primarily the minority. And who they were doing it to and why they were doing it was not known. There was no specific set of demands from anybody, nobody knew why it was being targeted, but apparently a number of people were involved. Community tensions were being aroused by the continued incidents that were occurring, and I was able to arrange a meeting between some of the minority community leadership in that area, the administrators, and county and local administrators of that program, to come up with a joint statement to the community. But, it was in the form of a mediation agreement. It was signed and released to the press. The pre-amble stated the value of this program to this community, and community leaders were affirming this. The institutional officials were stating that they wanted to be sensitive to community needs, but we need to know what they are and urge people to come forward and so on. That was a very minor, small scale kind of case, but I think it's one in which many people would say for an institution to be targeted for vandalism, that's not a mediation case. But I think it is possible in some circumstances, maybe somewhat like that, to provide mediation. Providing a joint voice to the community, that would help to provide standards of behavior or would work to secure such.

Question:
Did you ever have a concern that mediation would undercut a legitimate protest activity?

Answer:
Oh yes.

Question:
What did you do in that situation?

Answer:
In this case in Portland Oregon, the key part of the school desegregation plan was the development of a particular middle school that would be a feeder for a number of elementary schools. This was regarded as crucial to the desegregation plan. It was the result of joint committee work. The white community was contentious. Several school board members ran on the ticket to change or eliminate this middle school from that role. A majority of those newly elected people came in the office on January 1, and the first action that they took was to eliminate that middle school. There was immediate outcry from the black community in the wake of this. At the February school board meeting, they met in their usual public session, and shortly after they got underway, Ronnie Herndon showed up, and Ronnie is the president of Black United Front. He not only showed up, but he had a large number of his followers that came to the public meeting. They marched in, and Ronnie stepped up on the top of the desk and proceeded to walk down the top of the desk. As he came to each name tag plaque, he kicked it off, walked to the next, symbolically dismissing the school board. That was the declaration of war. Of course, the chairman of the school board adjourned the meeting, stated that this kind of behavior is intolerable, and so on. If anything like this was ever repeated, the police would be called. The March meeting was held, and I think a second meeting was held which was similarly disrupted, and an injunction was secured in State Court, adjoining Ronnie and the Black United Front from this kind of activity. Of course, Ronnie predictably said, "We'll fill up the jails." Marches were held, and protest rallies were held. The board had to approve, in public session so many days in advance, a $50 million capital improvements program that was desperately needed. Here's the dilemma. "How do we meet to pass this tax measure officially and legally, without being disrupted." That was the standoff. CRS could easily have gone into that situation at a much earlier stage, but we were just watching it in essence. The community was generating support, and I don't think it was sophisticated enough to negotiate anything yet. We had very good rapport with all parties involved, including Ronnie Herndon, the NAACP president, as well as the school superintendents and some of the school officials. After it was obvious that no breakthrough was forthcoming, and there was the threat to fill up the jails if they enforce this injunction, we knew it was going to escalate considerably from that point. We'd been in continuing contact with the parties. "Let us know when you feel that it would be in your interest to explore some sort of negotiation." Finally, we got the go ahead. "Yes, now is the time," and this was primarily from the community side. We met with the school officials, and they arranged a meeting of the board of education, for the sole purpose of considering whether to go into mediation.

Question:
Was this a public meeting?

Answer:
Oh yeah, open public meeting, and it was packed. Bob Lamb (Regional Director) and myself, he's African-American, and I'm white and a mediator. We stood up from the audience side and recommended mediation and outlined the guidelines. This had been explained individually to some of the board members, but we outlined mediation, which included among other things, closed sessions. No contacts with media. The chief editor of the Oregon Journal was there, and he is the chair of the State Press Freedom, it's a professional industry organization. He objected. I had stated the guidelines and I said, "What option do we have? We do not mediate in public and we will not mediate in public. We will withdraw from the situation." It was put in just those terms. Public mediation is built to fail; it would not work. He did not press his objections. The board voted to go ahead with it. We began mediation in a motel, with the Black United Front as the lead party with the Ablino Minister Alliance, which is primarily African American clergy and the Urban League.

Question:
Was this with the whole board?

Answer:
It was the chair and at least one of those who were elected to reject the middle school proposal. The school superintendent and assistant superintendent were there of course. It just happened that the term of the previous superintendent had just ended, and the new one came in and began during all of this. He was black. A lot of hope was put in him to solve this dilemma. Everybody accepted the ground rules and so on, but one problem did arise on one occasion. The editor of a black weekly newspaper was in an observer status. The community coalition supported his involvement, and of course the school district objected to his involvement. He committed himself to keep the proceedings confidential, and I think he was admitted with this clear understanding, and accepted by the school district. I think he attended no more than two sessions. This was the most difficult mediation case I've ever had.

Question:
Why?

Answer:
With all the pressures, operating on a deadline that had to be met, to get something worked out. It was like intransigent parties, and I usually use my fingers like this to describe the process that we're going through, the charges, counter charges, public acrimony and so on. Tension building and communication is described like this. They began to consider dialogue, mediation, and communication gets a little bit closer. Finally, they commit themselves to participating in mediation, they're talking directly to each other about their concerns and about their charges and backgrounds. Then, they began to talk about possible solutions, options, and alternatives. They begin to turn around and accept the fact that they have some common problems. Begin to search together for ways that they can jointly address those problems together. Eventually, this school board, in essence, had painted itself into a corner through the election of these people. "How can we all discover some way that the school board can change its position on this middle school and reinstate the status of that middle school without being seen to simply give in to the demands from the community? What face saving device can we come up with?" A lot of times, I can have a sense of what mediation is going to take place, what the answer is going to be, but this was one I could not see how on earth we were going to come out of this. I was trying to be positive and upbeat, but I was personally beside myself. By the end of these evenings, I would feel so discouraged. "I don't know what we can do that would be agreeable to both sides." Finally, somebody hit on an idea. It may have been the superintendent. "Let's hold community hearings in each of these feeder school communities. There were about four feeder schools. Let's hold hearings with the parents of each of these and let the parents that are directly involved have their input by voting on pieces of paper and by statements at the microphone reading the pros and cons of the reinstatement of the school. All the participants in the mediation will be in attendance at all four of these." Of course I said, "Who's going to convene these meetings? The school administration for that school? The PTA president? Who?" They said, "You are." So I had to arrange all this. All the publicity and promotion of these meetings. Anyway, we held these. A lot of feeling was vented in these meetings, but we got the data. I asked the Portland State University Mathematics Professor to collate and weigh the various responses to the various options. He stayed up to midnight doing this for me. After the four sessions were over, and I announced the results and gave them his report at the next mediation session, clearly the four school communities were in support of redesignating the school for this purpose in the coming year. We'd gotten some ideas in the inputs, too. This became the backbone of the agreement that was worked out and accepted by the parties. Black United Front had a meeting and they accepted this, and the Minister of Association and NAACP went along with them. The school board had to have its session to agree to this action, so they did two things. First, they had all of us convene with the school board in public session, and it was not disrupted. They proceeded to support and accept the mediation agreement, which included the reopening of this school. Then they adjourned to turn the meeting over to me and I witnessed, as we always did, the signing of the agreement by the chair of the Board of Education and the representatives from the community organizations. At that point, the press was invited to ask them questions, or anybody could ask them questions. As I recall, that was the completion of that evening. The next meeting was when they got together to pass the bond issue. That was a tough, high profile case. At different points, the media came to me and said, "If you can't let us into the meeting, will you have a press conference to tell us what's going on?" I did that and everybody was there, including TV and radio. This was the lead item on the news for days. During the protests and during this final period, all I could tell them was about the process that we were going through. "We have not succeeded in resolving issues in public, so now we're going to see if we can resolve it behind closed doors. And if we succeed, you will be notified as to the results and you can ask questions. But until then, we will give them this chance to get together and work it out in private." That seemed to go over very positively. The media coverage of this was expected of course, but they gave positive coverage to that meeting.

Question:
Going way back to the beginning of this story, what made the minority community decide it was time to negotiate ?

Answer:
I don't know. The leadership was sophisticated, and I would assume that it was felt that if nothing else significant was happening, let's try it now, let's see if we've put on enough pressure. They were fully aware of the bond issue of course, and the constitutional requirements of so much advanced notice, prior to the next election for this kind of a vote.

Question:
What was the time frame here? How soon before the deadline did it have to be submitted?

Answer:
It seems like it's as much as three months advance. It was a fairly extended period. There's a very definite deadline, and if they didn't get their request for the bond issue in by a certain date, it might be a year. Maybe a special election could've been held later on.

Question:
Do you think that deadline was part of what made them decide to sit down at the table, knowing that they've got pressure on them and they really want this and now is the time?

Answer:
Oh yes.

Question:
Or is it if they had passed then there wouldn't be any pressure?

Answer:
Right, everybody is fully aware of this sense of a deadline.

Question:
I'd like to go back and talk about trust. How important is it that you generate trust between yourself and the parties. How key is that to what you do?

Answer:
Trust certainly makes for more effectiveness, it makes one more effective as a mediator, at least in our culture. There'd have to be some confidence in a person's integrity or their ability, or else they would probably not be successful in persuading people to make a commitment to mediation.

Question:
How could you detect when you were succeeding in building trust?

Answer:
How would I know that I had trust?

Question:
How could you tell that you were getting the parties to be more comfortable to trust you more, to trust the process more? What signs were they giving you?

Answer:
Well, they would reveal the level of interest in it by questions and comments about it. Beyond that, I'm not sure that I could give you much of an answer.

Question:
Was it something very overt and obvious, as them saying, "Hey, we trust you now," or was it something a little more subtle than that?

Answer:
Oh, no it would be more subtle than that, like a willingness to proceed to accept recommendations or to participate in mediation. You could also tell by their level of frankness when talking about their concerns.

Question:
Were you able to operate if these levels were low or absent?

Answer:
Probably not.

Question:
Was your own race, ethnicity, age, or gender, ever a problem with you gaining trust?

Answer:
Oh yeah. I went into Monroe Prison, in the state of Washington, in response to a request from some of the African American inmates. They had arranged for me to talk with some of their members of the Black Prisoners Organization. Two or three of the members of this group, when we sat down to talk, upon hearing my accent, they asked, "Where you from?" "Alabama." It was immediate skepticism that anybody from Alabama could be of any help in this situation, or would be willing to be of any help. Really, there were times like this.

Question:
How were you able to get around that initial skepticism?

Answer:
Well, the same way I would when making a presentation to any group. I'd first try to get myself out of the way, by saying, "My name is Bob Hughes and as you notice, I am not from this area. I was born and raised in Alabama." Try to be up front and honest and open, and hopefully, get past that quickly in order to deal with more substantial issues. Deal with issues at hand. I would usually try to or make a joke about it. "I'm Bob Hughes, and as you noticed, I'm from South Mercer Island, or south Seattle."

Question:
Can you recall any examples of when you were used as a scapegoat by one of the parties?

Answer:
No, I don't recall being used in that way.

Question:
Did you have a special technique that you used to try to build trust between the parties?

Answer:
Getting them to work together, that is part of the mediation process. Maybe in joint committees, or task groups, which seem to be a very productive area for developing collaboration. I didn't have any particular exercises, for example, or training in that way that would have the effect of building trust.

Question:
Did you offer any type of training to various parties that were involved in conflict?

Answer:
Well, I would talk about mediation and explain the guidelines. I might also expound on how they might comply with these or fulfill these, or react to these in the mediation. But I know that for some mediators before mediation starts they'll have training sessions with one of the other parties on how to negotiate, and I've never done that. I felt like it could be difficult to my image of impartiality. I would always try to do the same thing to both sides, and let each of them know that I was doing this. We have had cases that would eventually be taken through a process where you ended up in a training session, but that's a little bit different from what you were asking.

Question:
We talked yesterday about the training that was given to police officers. How did that come about?

Answer:
Well, we arranged for that. You didn't ask this question but I'll answer it anyway. When you have a minority group that has limited resources and had problems with, for example an institution that has a lot of resources. When you get down to the point of fashioning an agreement, the last thing you want is for one side (it's usually the institution) to commit itself to doing all the things and the other party not committing itself to doing anything. So when you have this situation where your minority resources are limited it taxes the brains of everybody when they're trying to fashion an agreement and think in terms of each other. What can we work out that would help you, where you could help us do these things. Cross-cultural training was an area that seemed to fit into this, so that you know that is one area. Another one was the idea of promotion of careers in say, the criminal justice area. The minority community might be alienated especially by the conflict they are dealing with and would not entertain such thoughts. But if you have leadership that are urging people to get into this area and we will help you fill out an application for employment or maybe they could generate a scholarship or that sort of thing, it's a way of trying to balance the commitments.

Question:
I just realized when you spoke with us before I was misinterpreting the term promotion, I was thinking about moving up in rank.

Answer:
That too, well in the area of affirmative action. I was referring to both the recruiting and promotions of the existing officers so they have a model they can see that it's that there is a future. It's important for them to be able to see this.

Question:
But the other sense of the word was that the minority community would try to get people to come into police work.

Answer:
Promote careers in that professional vocational area.

Question:
When you provided typical assistance to one group did you always inform the other group that you were providing technical assistance to the other group?

Answer:
Yes, I tried to be open and equal in how I would treat each of the parties. I don't remember any obvious instances where I either did this unintentionally or was accused of that sort of thing.

Question:
How were you able to identify which various community resources to use?

Answer:
Most the time the parties themselves think of it in the context of our mediation because we need some of these things done or certain areas addressed. They create some approaches to it and identify resources that I wouldn't be familiar with at all. Like the one I mentioned this morning about the attorney justice professional.

Question:
So were you always receptive to those community resources that they highlighted or emphasized, or who had the final say?

Answer:
Oh it's their agreement, it's not mine. For example, they may want to write into the agreement this office, this program will be established or developed utilizing such and such a resource by all means. If both sides agree to it doesn't matter what I think or what I might prefer, if I see some danger in it, I might mention it, had you thought of this, but essentially I would not feel that I had any veto power. In fact, at Monroe Prison I was a mediator involved in segregation of cells. The local TV media picked up on this. The Native American prisoners inmate caucus, felt that isolation in Native American culture is much more severe for them than most other cultural groups. In periods of stress and strain they need contact and everybody recognized that as a need and agreed to it. So if I had the responsibilities for desegregation I don't tell them you can't do this because I had this other obligation. They can agree to illegal acts as far as I'm concerned

Question:
Can you talk a little bit about how you deal with apparently intractable demands from the part of one party? Or one party saying well that's non negotiable, if somebody makes a demand that the other side says is non negotiable and won't comply?

Answer:
Perhaps in setting an agenda for the sessions as an area that's my responsibility. I might manipulate the agenda by putting say a particular issue last, on the assumption that, we wouldn't get to it, or if we got to it we'd be so tired we couldn't deal with it. That's agenda manipulation which is a prerogative of every mediator.

Question:
What if it was a key item?

Answer:
I don't know. This may not be a direct answer to your question, but I think I had mentioned sometimes I can anticipate pretty well how a session is going to go. How many meetings we are going to have and that sort of thing. And there are others like the one I was telling you about earlier, about the school district. I could not see how under the sun we could come to any agreement here, but in that case the parties themselves ultimately used the process that we were going through to create an answer that I simply had not seen. They came up with the idea bouncing off of each other which was the breakthrough. So, I can't claim any credit for it. I just managed the process and they came up with the breakthrough and what sure looked to me like an intractable issue that I couldn't see how to get around it. That's about as much as I can say on that. But I don't think we ought to sell the parties short. The mediator isn't the all knowing person. The parties themselves can discover and create things that we can't see.

Question:
So you never go into caucus and say, "You better drop that one because it's never going to be solved?"

Answer:
Oh, well I might go into caucus and give some advice. Or say, this particular issue that you've raised is going to be pretty difficult to get an agreement on and I would make some recommendation.

Question:
I'm wondering if you would advise parties saying, "I just don't think the other side would accept that?"

Answer:
Oh, well I might say that. Meeting with parties in private caucus can be risky because presumably, they need to be consulting among themselves and really digging down and exposing their best thinking to each other. And for the mediator to be there and then leave and go over to the other caucus, at least the thought passes through the minds of most people, "What's he going to tell them that he's just heard? To what extent? How's he going to help them? Or maybe he won't?" That is I think a fairly risky area.

Question:
So I gather you don't caucus much?

Answer:
Not much. And it may be to test something out. I may go in and say, "What do you think about doing this?" I might go back and ask the same question to the other caucus and get their response and get back together and ask if they would be willing to try this based on what they've told me.

Question:
What would make you decide that it's time to do that?

Answer:
I don't know. Some perception of an idea that arose in the need for some fresh ideas.

Question:
But something that you couldn't bring up in joint session.

Answer:
Well, I mean if they were already in session I reflect on it. In other words, why would I withhold it until they were in private caucuses? I don't know, I guess you'd say trying to test the waters.

Question:
How did you decide when to meet separately with the parties and then when to bring them together? Presumably at the beginning you are meeting separately with each party. How do you decide that it's time to bring them together?

Answer:
Well when I've met separately with them that's primarily for the assessment purposes from relation of ideas we'd mentioned. And once the recommendations have been made then that reflects the idea that we should move into mediation. In the Portland case that I mentioned earlier, we had been in continuing contact with the parties throughout that period of tension and we didn't make the recommendation for mediation until what might be a fairly late hour. We felt that mediation would be effective and that the parties would now, likely, be agreeable to mediation. And check it out individually with them and if they said yes, then we formally arrange it.

Question:
Were there cases where you never brought the parties together, or never met with them separately?

Answer:
Never brought them together?

Question:
Did you ever do shuttle diplomacy where you just went back and forth, back and forth?

Answer:
I'd probably regard that as conciliation. You know, I think I'm trying to recall that Georgia case. That was shuttle diplomacy, taking proposals back and forth getting feedback and counter proposals. And that's one example where there was no meeting of the parties involved there. I'm sure it's happened, but off hand I can't remember, nothing comes to mind but I feel sure that it has happened.

Question:
It sounds like from our conversation that mostly you rely on the parties to come up with their own solutions, but do you ever develop solutions and present them to the party?

Answer:
Oh yeah. Like the fishing rights issues I would share with them how another community in a conflict situation resolved it. That in effect is suggesting something along this line or asking the question, "Can you adapt some of this to your benefit?"

Question:
Do you do this early on or do you let them grapple with it themselves for awhile and then present it if they run into trouble?

Answer:
I would probably do both. It would depend on the degree of conflict and the distance the parties are apart.

Question:
How did you deal with parties who came to the table just giving lip service who weren't really negotiating in good faith?

Answer:
Well, hopefully try not to arrange mediation until they were in fact ready to deal with sincerity. But if it happened anyway I would probably not attempt to go very far before talking with them privately and pointing out that I felt like they might not be as open as they needed to be to participate in mediation.

Question:
Was it usually handled simply like that? A simple caucus saying, "I don't think you are being as open as you should be." Now do they automatically go back in and are they forthright?

Answer:
No, probably the next day. We would probably be adjourned for that day. I would not expect a change of behavior without some period of reflection on what I was raising.

Question:
We talked yesterday a little bit about power disparity and I think you said that you wouldn't mediate unless there was some close equality of power. I was thinking at the time in the criminal justice cases where you have the police and a minority community, it seems to me that would be an instance where you have a very vast power difference, yet you still, I gather, mediated. How did you deal with that kind of power difference?

Answer:
Well, you've got several elements here. Publicity and public opinion are factors. Say the police did not deal fairly, there is always the possibility of publicity around their decisions that would make them look bad if they did this. That's outside the room of course. There are always potential pressure points that the minority community can use if they so chose that would make for potential build-up of their negotiating position, such as in the Portland case I mentioned. They were up against a very strong rigid position yet they were able to change that position. That kind of potential is always out there if it's resorted to and usually does not reflect well on say the institution that is involved.

Question:
Do you ever encourage the minority party to do that kind of power building, or do you kind of leave it up to them to decide when they need to do it?

Answer:
I would generally leave it up to them. In between disputes I may have comments to people as I might be discussing or critiquing a case. I might tell one community what happened in another one. These all convey suggestions, I would guess. I may not do it purposefully but I think that general kind of information of how the dynamics of one community are being followed are pertinent to all the communities. They should be aware of these kind of changes I think. I would tend to share it.

Question:
After you've gained some credibility of being this impartial mediator, was there ever a time when one party asked you to abandon that impartiality and maybe jump on one side with them?

Answer:
I don't think so. I usually make it clear in the beginning my value to you is that I be impartial. I can join your side because I might think that it's fair, but that doesn't help you. I just adds one more person over there. Then who's going to mediate? That's when you need a mediator and so I need you to help me to stay in that position.

Question:
Did confidentially ever become a problem? We talked about it some yesterday in terms of the fact that you try to avoid it when you can, but did it ever become a major issue?

Answer:
I don't think a major issue.

Question:
Was there ever a time when you insured party confidentially and you were unable to maintain that? Where something happened and one party felt that you weren't holding true to your word?

Answer:
Accusing me of violating confidentiality?

Question:
Yes.

Answer:
No, I don't recall any.

Question:
Or the other groups. Did they ever accuse the opposing group of violating confidentially?

Answer:
I can't remember off hand. There may have been concerns about the possibility of it, but as I mentioned earlier it never was a major issue. Allegations of violation of confidentiality I don't think ever became major issues.

Question:
Was it something you could just dismiss as something as not being true, or did you just not ever address it at all?

Answer:
Oh if it was of concern to one of the parties I might raise it during a joint session.

Question:
Did you ever do any mediation with the press involved?

Answer:
No. Let me think if there was any. No.

Question:
So the way you dealt with the media was to tell them that there's a process and this is what the process and we'll tell you the results when they come out.

Answer:
Yes. And I don't recall any instances where either of the parties went to the media and violated that group rule.

Question:
Did any of the parties ever demand having the media present or give a report in order to continue any negotiation process?

Answer:
No, I don't think so. I remember one case where the media tried every way they could to get as close to us as they could. We were in that Portland case and we were meeting in this conference room and it had big windows. Low and behold I was facing the windows and the parties were on either side of this long table and I suddenly realized as my focus went out the window there was a camera team set up on the roof of the building across the street aimed right at us. To us it was a joke because of course they didn't know what was being said, but we laughed at it and closed the blinds or something like that, or waved at them, but that was funny.

Question:
I've got a totally different question for you. How did the changing nature of the Civil Rights Movement and the protest activity over the years shape the challenges that you faced as a mediator, or shape the work that you do? Wording it differently, was there any difference from the early days to the later days in terms of what you could or couldn't do?

Answer:
Hmm...the only thing that I can think of along this general line are the changes of mediation itself as they evolved. In Georgia I was involved in a mediation in which we didn't have any ground rules at that stage. That was before CRS became involved in formal mediation. For example, staying out on like the picket line, not a labor management, but a civil rights picket line, and the leader of the protest group and the official from the institution were out there and we were talking. Another conciliator and I said, "Well let's jot that down." So on the roof of this car we jotted these things down. Okay, now you initial it, you initial it, and they did and that was an agreement and at that moment that kind of confirmed what we had been saying verbally.

Question:
So things got more formal over time I guess?

Answer:
Right, if there was going to be mediation now you go through these steps.

Question:
If I can just ask one question to build on that, how did that affect your job?

Answer:
Well I think formal mediation was a very useful tool for CRS to get at complex issues and to get a handle on things. Especially when a conciliated verbal agreement on the street or in a meeting room lasts as long as the memory of the people who are sitting there. But in Fairbanks some of the school cases we had mediation between the Fairbanks Native Association and Fairbanks North Star School District. For two years we met every six months or so to review the progress on the mediation agreement. For two years not a single person was involved in those sessions that were in the mediation. The Fairbanks FNA leadership had changed and others had been elected. The school superintendent left there and went away.

Question:
What do you think are the most important skills and attributes of the effective Civil Rights mediator?

Answer:
I think one of the most important ones is the ability to conceptualize and to formulate. How to formulate creativity of course. Impartiality, having confidence in people, and communicating that confidence in such a way that helped strengthen the commitment of people to this process. I'm not sure. Nothing else comes to mind. I don't recall answering this question lately.

Question:
What do you think is your best attribute that makes you, or made you, an effective mediator?

Answer:
Stubbornness, focus, staying with it until we got it finished, not letting people give up. That's an attribute. I don't know how central that would be, but it helps. You're stubborn and unwilling to let your pride be eroded by failure.

Question:
Have you ever tried mediation and it failed? Or have you ever tried conciliation and it failed?

Answer:
Oh, plenty of cases of conciliation, but I don't know what they were. I conveniently forget those. If I apply myself, I might come up with something additional. The only mediation case that I can recall offhand as failing was when I was under a lot of pressure. I had very little time to assess and to meet with the parties. This was an Indian fishing rights issue in a fairly small community. When we got to the table, it became evident early on that these property owners had real little interest or feeling that this was a problem for them. The complaints had come only from the tribal side. There was only one Indian tribe involved in this case. I simply didn't have time to assess it adequately, and this could be part of my fault that I had not given an adequate explanation or a clear explanation of the guidelines of what mediation is about to the property owners. Therefore, they did not have any real understanding of what we were about. They should have been able to see that if we have an agreement, we might avoid problems. But they felt like they didn't have any problems at the time. But in any case, there was no progress taking place and there was no problem of identification from the standpoint of the landowner side, and there was obvious disinterest in being there. And as I remember, I didn't feel well about my own role and the explanations I had been giving. As I recall we spent an hour or an hour and a half, and that was probably about it. I then adjourned without really bringing up any confrontation with them. I just adjourned and did not set a time for any next session.

Question:
So what happened to the grievances that the Native Americans had?

Answer:
They were of a temporary nature, I know that. The problems would be seasonal, and the area that they were concerned about accessing was a fairly small area and it did not appear to be of great significance to the tribe. They could easily do what they had been doing for the past two decades, and that's fishing in areas where they weren't being confronted. But I felt bad about it and couldn't regenerate interest in coming. I didn't feel like there was any interest in pursuing it.

Question:
In cases where parties were committed to the process, did all of them succeed?

Answer:
Succeeded in varying degrees, of course. You don't necessarily get agreement on all the issues that are identified, and some will just omit reference to areas where there was no agreements. Other mediated agreements will go far beyond what was being addressed, and people become creative in going beyond the initial issues.

Question:
Scholars sometimes use the term "ripeness." Have you heard that term, where we talk about the situation being ripe for mediation, the parties are ready to come to the table? Or not being ripe? Did you ever try to make an assessment of what contributes to ripeness and lack of ripeness?

Answer:
Well, in particular, I don't know about trying to make any purposeful assessment. The timing in coming to the table is a factor in every mediation. Unfortunately, because of the pressure of cases and the geography, I was working all the way from Barrel, Alaska, to Poketo, Idaho, in the same period. And with the geography involved, and the travel involved, and the lack of money to travel, there was always modified ripeness. If I can't be there, it doesn't matter if it's ripe or not, I can't be there. And I try to get the parties to hold off if they are ready. On the other hand, I'm not sure what else I can say about ripeness. But, I think ripeness is a very valid concept. What we should never do is rush mediation, when the parties simply aren't ready, even though we have time available and we are in the area. Because it's not ripe, we shouldn't do it. There's another area that you haven't touched on, that is, to me very important, and that is the idea of peaceful resolution of an issue versus pacification. Some mediators will be willing to pacify a situation, develop a superficial mediation agreement which really doesn't deal with the main issues -- but has the effect of diverting attention, or diluting attention and commitment -- and it's unfair, usually to the community group. I think you'd be more likely to dilute and divert community organizations rather then governmental institutions, or larger majority institutions.

Question:
How do you protect against that happening?

Answer:
Well, just off hand, I'd say these are fairly subjective kinds of judgments that you make. I know in CRS, the number of mediation cases can be of significance. In the past, there have been certain factors in personal evaluations relating to the numbers of mediation cases. These are put into records, to show somebody having mediated this number of cases during the past year, or certain period. This can have the effect of people developing mediated cases just for the numbers. A numbers game. I think that's unfair to the parties. It's important not to let the numbers of cases dilute the significance of the qualitative aspects of mediation, or mediation casework. Qualitative versus quantitative.

Question:
How long did the typical case last, from the time that you first started to do the assessment until you got a settlement?

Answer:
I have mediated, successfully mediated, cases in one trip, say to Juneau, Alaska. Because of the cost of going there, I could make only one trip up there in the foreseeable future and could stay there two, maybe three days. So, going in, making the assessment, making the recommendations, and arranging a joint meeting, and then coming out with a signed agreement at the end of it. Sometimes, when the train leaves, the train leaves. And if you're not on it, you've been left behind. So you just have to jam things as far as possible. This may sound paradoxical, considering what I've just gone over, but if mediation is needed and looks like it can produce an agreement around significant issues, then heck, go for it and get as much as you can. I guess that's the reconciliation between my two statements.

Question:
What about the exception?

Answer:
Oh, that's very much the exception.

Question:
Okay, so the norm would be how long?

Answer:
Well, it's according to the case. It just varies so much. Like the Anchorage police department case that I mentioned was as long as a couple of months, maybe three months. I never had any cases that went beyond three months, and that case was probably as long as any because of difficulty of accessing the area from Seattle.

Question:
The reason that I ask that is that a lot of the folks that we spoke to, talked about cases that would take several months. I can think of a couple that took up to a year. Recently, we talked to Leo Cardenas. Dana asked, "How long does your typical case last?" He said, "Two or three days." We both looked at him like, "Geez, there's a wild discrepancy here." So we were talking to Dick and said, "Dick we are really astonished because everybody else has been talking about two or three months and Leo's talking about two or three days. What's the deal?" And Dick said, "Well, everybody else is talking about the high profile cases and Leo's talking about the day-to-day stuff." So I was just trying to figure out where you were on that continuum.

Answer:
I've heard of cases that go on for a year or more, but I would close the case and go back a year later and re-open it or something. That, to me, is unrealistic. Some other factor is apparently at play here.

Question:
So are there any questions that we should have asked that we didn't ask? Are there other stories that are worth telling?

Answer:
That's another can of worms, so you better watch out.

Question:
Any key lessons we're missing here?

Answer:
There's one conciliation case among the Nez Perce Indians in Northern Idaho and the State Department officials of Idaho. There was one summer where there was a confrontation between the younger travel fisherman who traveled a hundred miles off the reservation to a site near a state hatchery. Anyway, a confrontation had developed and I knew that it was pending. The confrontation had developed as the Indian camp, which was along the side of the river, was invaded by the state department fishers and a forestry specialized team. I won't call it a swat team, but it was a specialized and very mobile team, trained and well-armed of enforcement offices. There were about thirty Native Americans, or tribal members, in the encampment in all. Men, women, and children. About a dozen members of this swat team would make sweeps through the village, looking for illegally caught salmon that was not in season. These sweeps would occur at any hour of the day or night, without warning. The agents would go into teepees and so on. This created a lot of tension. I was there, sort of on the sidelines, because these operations had been set up and planned in Boise, well in advanced of the season, when the fishing opened and the run began. One time, when they made the sweep, the Indians chased them out of the village with clubs, not firearms. But, they were chased up the hill to the road where the truck of the troopers was there to pick them up. This was all on foot. Well, as they approached the truck, the Nez Perce Indians caught up with them and cut them off from accessing the trunk. They had their cars parked in this area, the tribal members did, and they were unlocking the trunks, but not opening them. Several obvious guns were in there and it was clear that they were on the verge of a firefight. The state enforcement officers had shotguns and they began to chamber their weapons. They were almost surrounded and backed up against their truck. The Indians were moving in on them, shouting, with clubs. With the weapons that were obviously there, I felt that when it came down to it, the last resort was that I had to walk over between them and tell them to stop. "Somebody's going to get killed here, and none of us want bloodshed if it can be avoided. Tom, I want you to select one or two persons. And Bill, I want you to select one or two persons with you, and in two hours from now, I want you to meet me over at my motel. We're going to work out an alternative to settling this thing. In the meantime, you have your people turn around and go back that way, and you have your men get in that truck and go back to your camp." And it worked. A couple of hours later that evening, we worked out an agreement that would establish a process that they were willing to follow in establishing communication and in inspecting the camp. They were calling it a sweep, but it was "inspecting the camp" for these purposes. "It will be done at these reasonable hours. And when you approach, you will wait until one of these designated persons comes to meet you and escort you through." And that seemed to defuse the situation. There was a television camera team on-site from Boise, that filmed the confrontation. The governor saw it that night on the evening news, and he sent his legal representative up. There were some state patrolmen involved there, too. Highway patrol. The governor has authority over highway patrol, but not the Commission of Fish and Game. He had no authority over them, but he sent legal council of the state department of law enforcement up by helicopter that night, and it landed in the field out there. There was a big stir and he had the captain in charge of that state patrol unit order them back to the barracks. He did not want the state troopers providing support for the fishery enforcement personnel. The legal council of the tribe, and the legal council for the state department of law enforcement, and the tribal chairman, and I got a group together representing both sides. Together, we realized that we did not know what the law provided and what the law did not provide. We decided to meet at the University of Idaho, at the Law School, and have a conference and invite representatives of other tribes. It would be co-sponsored by the Department of Justice Community Relation Services, Nez Perce tribe, State Department of Idaho, law enforcement of Idaho, and the Law School. We had about a two day conference, Indian Law and Jurisdiction was the title that we gave it. Other tribes sent some people in, because they had similar problems. Not necessarily fishing, but traffic control on the reservation. That was very successful in establishing a collaborative approach. This developed relationships, trust building, and so on. The following year, instead of meeting at the university, we went to Spokane. There's a large convention hotel, and we had 300 or more people attending from all over the Northwest. Some were there from other parts of the country, experts on Indian Law and Jurisdiction, conducting a seminar on fishing and other law enforcement jurisdictions. It was very successful. That all grew out of that. Guys involved in that confrontation jointly sponsored Native American and official agencies. That model was unique in the country. You've had one party or the other holding these conferences at universities while we're here, but not a jointly sponsored, collaborative effort. That was also the model that we used in the Northwest Coalition. Officials and Civil Rights Groups together, making a collaborative program, and forming approaches to those hate issues. The same thing in these Native American fishing issues. Both of them were unique and there had not been that kind of joint collaborative effort in either area previously. Well hey, I didn't realize it was going to get into all of that, but some of these, which may seem to be a little, fairly limited, area of mediation will channel conflict to the table. At the table, we don't have it all here either. "We better involve some other resources and do something." It kept growing and growing until it developed to that scale, and a lot of that seemed to put a cap on a lot of those confrontation issues. The sponsorship in the second of those Indian Law Jurisdiction conferences was very broad, with the Northwest Tribal Law Enforcing Association, the State Department of Law Enforcement, for 2 or 3 states, the Northwest Indian Treaties, the Northwest Indian Tribal Council and so on. They were authorities from all over the country.

Question:
So when we were talking about pacifism, you wanted to add something.

Answer:
Not pacifism, but mediation as a means of pacification. I think it is an unfortunate use of that process and we must, as responsible mediators, always keep in our mind peace with justice as the ultimate answer. Obviously, peace without justice is temporary peace. Justice issues would be back to be raised again in a matter of time, and the idea of pacification is short-sighted.