Shame Pole mocking Exxon is planted in Cordova

By FuMa, Unfiltered 3-30-07

Shame Pole mocking Exxon is planted in Cordova
OIL SPILL: Mike Webber carves a totem to remember disaster.
By ALEX deMARBAN
Anchorage Daily News
Published: March 25, 2007
Last Modified: March 25, 2007 at 03:59 AM

The toughest part about creating a totem pole designed to mock Exxon
Mobil on the anniversary of the largest oil spill in U.S. history
wasn't carving the details of dying animals.

No, the toughest part was etching the words "We will make you whole
again" from the trunk of yellow cedar, said Alaska Native carver Mike
Webber of Cordova.

Webber and others believe Exxon broke that promise, made to Cordova
residents by a top company official after the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill,
by refusing to pay affected Alaskans billions of dollars in punitive
damages.

"It made me so angry it took me a week to carve those words out," he said.

An Anchorage federal jury awarded thousands of plaintiffs $5 billion
in punitive damages in 1994, but Exxon appealed and the case has been
mired in court ever since.

In December, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals reduced those damages to $2.5 billion. Exxon is challenging
that too.

Webber, who turned to carving after breaking his neck on his fishing
boat in 1999, said the 11 million-gallon spill in Prince William Sound
devastated his family economically and ruined lucrative herring and
salmon fisheries.

He didn't balk when the Eyak Native village president in Cordova
commissioned him to carve a 7-foot-tall ridicule pole last month.

Webber's Tlingit ancestors carved such poles to embarrass rich people
who owed society, but such poles are rare today, he said.

The Exxon pole won't get money out of the company, but it will remind
people what happened, said Webber, 46. The pole's images of the spill
are rife with apocalyptic symbolism and the epic court battle it
spawned. It was unveiled at a public ceremony in Cordova on the
spill's 18th anniversary Saturday.

Topping the totem is the upside-down face of former longtime Exxon CEO
Lee Raymond, sporting a Pinocchio-like nose.

"So kids can figure out he's a liar," said Webber Friday afternoon by
phone, as he brushed a sealing coat over the recently painted pole.

An oil slick spilling from Raymond's mouth bears the infamous words
uttered by Don Cornett, formerly Exxon's top official in Alaska,
Webber said.

In figures painted on the pole, sea ducks, a sea otter and eagle float
dead on the oil. A herring near the slick has lesions. There's a boat
for sale with a family crew on board, commemorating fishermen who went
belly up, and a bottle of booze to remind people that Joe Hazelwood,
who was captain of the Exxon Valdez, had been drinking before turning
the helm of the ship over.

An e-mail statement from current Exxon spokesman Mark Boudreaux sent
Friday said the company was sorry Cordova residents "have decided to
take this unfortunate action."

Exxon knows many Alaskans are still angry over the tragic accident,
the e-mail said.

In the past, the company has contended it owes no more than $25
million, having already laid out more than $3 billion for compensatory
payments, the cleanup, and settlement of state and federal claims..

It added that no government scientist has released a peer-reviewed
study linking the spill to the herring decline, and depressed salmon
prices aren't Exxon's fault.

"As difficult as this is to accept, we believe these issues are the
result of free markets and other factors at work, not as a result of
the Valdez oil spill," the e-mail said.

Cordova author Riki Ott, who has written about the spill and gave
Webber ideas for the ridicule pole, said a study by
government-sponsored scientists linking the herring crash to the spill
is undergoing a peer-review process.

Several peer-reviewed studies show oil causes problems for herring at
early life stages, she said.

Bob Henrichs, Eyak tribal government president, paid $5,000 of his own
money for the carving. He doesn't know the last time a ridicule pole
went up in Alaska, he said.

The pole will likely stand in the tribal government's cultural center
in Cordova. It's provoked a lot of anger among residents who visited
Webber's shop, he said Friday.

"A lot of people put it out of their mind and they see this and it
brings up all the old emotions," he said. "They're not crying, but
they're not very happy."

The spill's psychological effects linger, Webber said. Families that
lived off the sea were forced into other work, breaking bonds that
kept them close. Native subsistence foods like seals and butter clams
haven't returned to beaches still layered with underground oil.

Among the host of images on the pole is a Native crying 18 tears, one
for each year since the spill. The ribs are showing and the heart has
a hole.

"They put a hole in our heart and they've taken part of our soul as
well," he said.

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