MARYSVILLE — When the Makah Tribe on the Olympic Peninsula decided to take advantage of treaty rights and hunt a gray whale, Michael Kundu was the man organizing the opposition.
An environmental activist and former spokesman for Sea Shepherd’s Pacific Northwest chapter, Kundu battled with members of the tribe in the media.
Kundu, who today is running for a seat on the Marysville School Board, believed the hunt was a way for the tribe to start commercial whaling. The Makah saw it as a way of preserving a significant piece of their culture.
It is his disparaging e-mail conversations with Indian activists from three years ago that now have come back to haunt him.
Kundu on Friday admitted sending the e-mails, saying he was wrong and regrets what he wrote in the heat of argument.
"I think I responded badly," he said. "Those are my words, I tell you I was baited out. They were baited responses, they were strong, visceral responses. And they were wrong, unquestionably."
His words from 2000 may now cost him support among members of the Tulalip Tribes.
Tribal Council Chairman Herman Williams Jr. said he would not like to see Kundu on the school board. There are 934 American Indian students in the 11,000-student school district.
"I’m going to have to say no can do," Herman said. "I don’t think it would be appropriate. We have a very mixed culture in the Marysville School District, and I don’t think he can be a part of that."
State Rep. John McCoy, D-Tulalip, said he’s known about Kundu’s e-mails for some time.
"I’m disappointed in Mr. Kundu’s beliefs, but they’re not unfamiliar to me, and I’ve had to live with those kinds of beliefs in the past," he said. "No, he doesn’t get my vote. He never had it."
Kundu, who is running against incumbent Erik Olson in the Nov. 4 election, also has come under fire for campaign mailers that claimed state Sen. Aaron Reardon endorsed his campaign. Reardon hasn’t, and Kundu said it was a misunderstanding.
The upcoming school board race is one of the underlying factors in the recent 49-day Marysville teachers strike.
Teachers’ anger with district superintendent Linda Whitehead stretches to all five school board members, who support her. Board members Olson, Cary Peterson and Mark Johnson are seeking new four-year terms.
The 650-member Marysville Education Association is backing challengers Kundu, Vicki Gates and Carol Jason.
With three seats up for grabs, supporters on both sides see control of the fractious district as being at stake in the election.
In a June 14, 2000, e-mail to whale hunt supporter Keith Hunter, a Choctaw Indian who lives on the Makah reservation, Kundu said the Makah’s decision to kill a whale was devout loyalty "to a cryptic and dying culture — fascinating!"
"Look at the faces of your youth, Keith — you’ll see Limp Bizkit and Kid Rock, not Willy Seaweed. It’s only going to take another generation and a few more sessions of Congress, old boy… like Paul (Watson, leader of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society) said, your arcane culture always seems to equate ‘advance’ with some act of ritual or ceremonial killing.
"It’s not surprising they easily succumbed to the likes of (Capt. George) Vancouver and Quadra (a Spanish explorer)…"
On April 18, 2000, Kundu was responding to an e-mail from Mike Two Horses, a Lakota-Dakota Sioux with the Coalition to End Racial Targeting of American Indian Nations.
Two Horses was arguing with statements Kundu had posted on a Web site about the drowning of a young Makah man who had fallen or been swept from a canoe. Kundu wrote that the 18-year-old was intoxicated or on drugs, which police at the time were investigating.
"Judging from your last name, you’re taking this personally — of course, it’s a sovereignty issue in your eyes, isn’t it? Guess again. Native Americans have a higher ratio of drug and alcohol abuse than Western, nonaboriginal society…" Kundu wrote.
"This hunt will end in ridicule of the Makah among all Native Americans, particularly when it is discovered that, alas, drugs and alcohol are as prevalent among Makah youth as they were last year — the only difference is that now there’s some federal funding around to get higher quantities of the stuff…"
"I apologize for what I said then," Kundu said Friday. "My words at that time are not something I would be proud of today."
Kundu said he supports Indian sovereignty and native rights. "I just don’t believe in ritualized killing," he said.
He got involved after obtaining documents under the Freedom of Information Act that he claimed the Makahs intended to use their treaty to begin commercial whaling. He stopped managing Sea Shepherd’s Makah campaign once the tribe "tried to make it a treaty rights issue," he said.
"I wasn’t that comfortable attacking the Makah when it came from that," he said.
The e-mails he had been responding to were disparaging to "my culture and my mother and my background," Kundu said. He himself has been a victim of racism, he said. His parents were East Indian — his first name is Amitava — and German, and he grew up in Flensburg, Germany, and Toronto.
Kundu noted that he is running his campaign on integrity.
"People need to be willing to admit their mistakes," he said. "Consequently, people need to be willing to forgive others for making their mistakes. Without recognizing that, there’s no way for us to move forward."
Kundu said he has a meeting with the Tulalip Tribes next week, at which he hopes to explain his e-mails and still earn support.
"Do I regret saying those words to Kii yaa tuk? Yes, I do. But I hope that tribal members are willing to recognize the good things I’ve done with First Nations people," he said. Those include working to preserve old-growth trees on Vancouver Island and teaching Tulalip schoolchildren about orcas through his environmentalist organization Project SeaWolf.
Kundu, 39, is the director of Project SeaWolf, his home-based nonprofit group founded in January 1998 "to protect biodiversity in the Canada-U.S. border region of the Pacific Northwest," according to the organization’s Web site.
Kundu said he figured his e-mails would appear during the campaign. "When you type with e-mail, whatever words you use, they float around in that ether," he said. "I was opposed to whaling, I wasn’t opposed to the tribe."
One of the groups that has endorsed Kundu said Friday they still back him.
"If those are his statements, they certainly aren’t our beliefs or feelings toward Native Americans," said Mike Sells, secretary-treasurer of the Snohomish County Labor Council. "It’s to his credit to apologize for them, and doesn’t change our endorsement of his candidacy for the school board."
Teachers union president Elaine Hanson could not be reached for comment Friday.
Questions also have also been raised about Kundu’s education. In Toronto, Kundu first earned a bachelor’s degree, then went on to earn a yearlong certificate in corporate communications at Seneca College. He said it is a master’s degree equivalency, with the course running eight hours a day from January to December. A spokeswoman at his alma mater said the certificate is not a master’s degree and may not have a U.S. equivalent.
Kundu this week also apologized to Reardon, now a candidate for county executive, for listing the politician among his endorsements. He said it was a mistake.
"I don’t have Aaron’s endorsement," Kundu said, adding that he sent a certified letter to Reardon offering to make a public retraction.
Brian Parry, Reardon’s campaign manager, said he made it clear that Reardon doesn’t endorse people in races in which he’s not a voter.
Win or lose, Kundu said he plans to move into Marysville School Board president Helen Mount’s district after the election, where he will run against her in two years.
Kundu said he never kept his plan a secret and has talked about it with others, but "it just hasn’t come up with voters."
"I’m of the opinion the whole board needs to be replaced," Kundu said. "My whole intention was to knock Erik off in this election, then I’ll be in her district, and my intention was to run against her and knock her off, too."
Kundu and his wife are selling their home in the Sunnyside area east of town and have arranged to purchase a home in Mount’s district, near Cedarcrest School.
They deliberately set the closing date after the election so Kundu would qualify for Olson’s District 5 seat. Under a recently revised policy, a school board director who moves into a different district can keep the seat until the next regular school election. At that time, the district would have an election for the position in which the director no longer lives.
"I don’t believe the intent of the policy was meant to allow someone to deceive the voters and manipulate the system," Mount said.
Herald reporter Scott North contributed to this story.
Reporter Cathy Logg: 425-339-3437 or logg@heraldnet.com.
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