Hope everyone had a good March! Now we are going into April, a time usually marked by the singing of the frogs and the sprouting of our non-human kin. Spring in Chinuk Wawa is called chxi-wam ili?i which can be translated into early - warm - land/place/ground/earth.
There are two parts of this newsletter. First I am addressing some discourse I’ve been hearing and reading in Seattle. The second part is filled with the completion of many projects I’ve been working on.
Recently, I have been noticing a trend around the discourse of two phrases - Coast Salish and unceded, predominately coming from non-Coast Salish people. First, I’d like to give you all some background on the understanding of what “Coast Salish” means. I obviously can’t sum up everything and can only provide what I’ve been taught through my family and research. Generally, I’ve heard Coast Salish being used to talk about Indigenous People who have inhabited the Salish Sea since time immemorial.
This seemingly makes sense, however people are mis-spatializing Coast Salish people to only the environment within and boundaries of the Salish Sea watershed. Coast Salish refers to the grouping of tribes whose languages are related and under the Coast Salish language family.
I wanted to research some of the first documents that used Coast Salish to better understand this term. Google Books Ngram is helpful for this as it searches through books and highlights exactly what you are asking for in the server. You’ll see below the rise of the term “Coast Salish,” beginning around 1870. This is a little more than 75 years after George Vancouver “discovered” the Puget Sound.
One of the first instances of “Coast Salish” I could find comes from Franz Boas in a collection of his findings from 1898 titled: Traditions of the Thompson River Indians of British Columbia. In the introduction Boas writes, “The languages constituting the Salish stock may be grouped in two main divisions, - the coast Salish and the Salish of the interior”.
Boas’ writing and reporting shaped the term Coast Salish we use today. What I want to draw your attention to is how the languages are related. Since the Makah Tribe is on the Western tip of Washington, one might think they are a Coast Salish tribe. However, their language is unrelated to the surrounding tribes who are in the Coast Salish language family and instead is connected to the Wakashan language family on Vancouver Island. Today it is always preferable to use specific tribal names or languages.
Below is a map that highlights the diversity of Coast Salish languages. Through an anthropologist’s eyes, I am considered Coast Salish because I am Quinault.
Next I’d like to touch a bit upon the term “unceded”. Lately, I have seen people use this term in their land acknowledgements for the Seattle area. When I see this, I can’t help but cringe a little and I’d like to unpack the term here to explain its inaccuracy. Unceded is a derivation of ceded that comes from the verb “to cede”. According to Merriam-Webster to cede something is “to yield or grant typically by treaty”. So by calling Seattle unceded lands, the person is inadvertently undermining the Point Elliot Treaty of 1851 which directly expresses in Article 1 that: “The said tribes and bands of Indians hereby cede, relinquish, and convey to the United States all their right, title, and interest in and to the lands”.
Though the process of the treaties was horrible, unjust, and manipulative, it is inappropriate and incorrect to ignore the exact language that the United States of America used in regard to the Stevens Treaties. Dismissing this language can harm Native peoples as tribes have protected and utilized this specific language to preserve our rights. This can be seen in the 1974 Boldt decision, where Judge Boldt affirmed Washington State tribes’ access to harvest and to co-manage their “usual and accustomed grounds” for fishing. Tribal peoples ensured that these treaties protected subsistence in “usual and accustomed grounds” and this language is enshrined in the treaty and was thus recognized to end the Fish Wars of the 1970s. To learn more about the Boldt decision you can read more here.
However, there are many places where cities, institutions, and non-Native peoples live on/in unceded territories. This is true inVancouver, B.C. because the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations never gave their lands to the Crown. What I speculate is that the use of “unceded” in Seattle has been parroted due to other land acknowledgements and conversations about other tribes and communities.
Ultimately, it is important to research the legal Indian history within your area because it all is different and varies geographical quite quickly. This also matters because treaties are two-way negotiations. Treaties are the supreme law of the land, outlined by the U.S. constitution, but are often depicted as being a problem for Native people to have to deal with. But these are non-Native peoples’ treaties too, meaning people who live on these lands need to understand that there are laws and reserved rights that supersede their claim.
I don’t know how many people know this but back in 2018-2019, I was the first Indigenous intern at the Seattle Office of Planning and Community Development. Because of this internship, I transferred out of studying Fishery Sciences and turned towards American Indian Studies. That internship taught me a lot of things, like treaty language and inter-governmental relationships with tribes. But what I continue to look back on is the importance of incorporating Coast Salish knowledge systems into the built environment. We exert agency when we apply Coast Salish knowledge systems to places and the land. It’s reaffirming who we are. That we are still here and will continue to be.
Throughout last summer, other urban Natives and I got the chance to help review the Seattle 2035 Comprehensive Plan. Out of those conversations, I got asked to write the forward for the Arts and Culture Section. Less than a month ago, Mayor Harrell released the draft plan, including my forward. I am excited to share it with you all as well as post an audio clip of myself reading it.
In 2018, I applied to a position at the City of Seattle to become the first Indigenous intern in the Office of Planning and Community Development (OPCD). OPCD, which was a bureaucratic mystery to me, soon gave me insight into the important structures that make a city succeed or fail. I took on the position as an undergraduate student at the University of Washington to move out of my comfort zone and attempt to understand how and if Coast Salish values could be implemented into the planning process of the city. For my entire life, I only saw our knowledge systems presented as artwork around the city. Rarely did I witness the authentic expression of place that combines our traditions with our history, language, and ceremony. Skeptically, I began researching Indigenous city planning texts, videos, and case studies. I even studied abroad to the University of British Columbia and took one of the few Indigenous Urban Planning classes in the world. This interest became clearer when I was introduced to members of the Papa Pounamu, Māori, and Pacific People who advise the New Zealand Planning Institute on the integration of their cultural perspectives in urban Aotearoa (New Zealand). I asked them what does success look like for the Papa Pounamu? Quickly and almost as if it were prepared beforehand, a member said:
You could reach back in time, grab a chief, and walk him down King Street. There would be enough stuff to let him know he’d be home.
Since then, I have thought about this statement, using this framing in the work I do today. And while I often felt jealous of how other cities were fast-tracking this inclusion, those other places weren’t my home. The answer from Papa Pounamu relates to what is unique about the land and culture we still have in Seattle. It prompts reflecting and building on our own frameworks that help us implement arts and culture in Seattle. The response to creating success is an active relationship with the ancestors in the area. The chief isn’t dropped off by himself, but you are actively walking beside him, with him. Together you both are observers on an ordinary street or even one that so strongly juxtaposes a chief on a street named after the Western conceptualization of a chief… a King. And if you’ve succeeded in letting the chief know that he’s in his homelands, you’ve accomplished retaining his sense of place in a constantly changing urban environment. In a broader sense, it’s not about the Papa Pounamu, but about the individual who is imagining how they would bring any person of importance, father, mother, aunt, uncle, matriarch, language keeper, fisherman, elder, or youth into the vision.
A strong sense of place has always been the lifeblood of the Seattle community. Unmistakable views of Tahoma (Mt. Rainier). The deep emerald greens of the Cascades and the Olympics. Foggy mornings and liquid sunshine afternoons. We are neighbors to the glacially carved Salish Sea, home to ravens, orcas, and sand-burrowing geoducks.
With this shared appreciation of the landscape, we can continue to build the policies and implement them in the 2035 Comprehensive Plan. We can get closer to being able to bring not only an ancestor of these lands to understanding that they are home but extending it to all the distinct cultural communities in Seattle. Not just the people of the past but everyone who’s contributed to making Seattle extraordinary. Those communities’ ancestors should be walked through a place that was built and cherished by their descendants. Seattle is already special in this situation, we’ve been indebted to The Gang of Four (Gossett, Maestas, Santos, Whitebear), nourished from P-Patches, and spoiled by grunge. Our communities and cultural spaces are an extension of the environment. They always have been. We can be one of the first metropolitan areas on the West Coast to lead with how we situate arts and culture through a lens of making all of our ancestors proud and our descendants thankful. It’s us in the present that needs to be proactive.
Art also needs to be channeled from anger, fear, and pain. It can allow for unheard communities to be known and amplified. It lets us know where we’ve failed in the past and how we can be accountable in the future. It lets us know how we can appreciate the things that the older generation didn’t have. It lets us wonder would a chief, whose name was given to our city, feel at home near King Street Station? Where much of his life he knew it as dᶻidᶻəlal’ič (little crossing over place).
Let me know what you thought! If you’d like to view the rest of the 2035 Comprehensive Plan you can do so here.
Additionally, I would encourage everyone who lives in Seattle to voice their opinion of the plan. Especially in the sectors around Housing and Arts and Culture. This plan is super important to how we are planning for Seattle’s growth and we need to hear from everyone! A lot of stuff we talk about on this newsletter is applicable. Like ensuring that the city incorporates Lushootseed into wayfinding, protecting culturally modified trees / preserving tree canopies, and making sure urban Natives feel safe in the city.
The engagement hub is linked here. As well as the in-person meetings with City officials below.
Wednesday, April 3, 6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Chief Sealth International High School, 2601 SW Thistle St, Seattle, WA 98106Tuesday, April 16, 6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Garfield Community Center, 2323 E Cherry St, Seattle, WA 98122Thursday, April 25, 6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Eckstein Middle School, 3003 NE 75th St, Seattle, WA 98115Tuesday, April 30, 6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
McClure Middle School, 1915 1st Ave W, Seattle, WA 98119
I’m also happy to share a new project I’ve been working on with the Pacific Science Center. This project was special because I grew up going to the Pacific Science Center as a little kid. Now I was able to help refresh a core exhibit.
Seattle, WA — March 29, 2024 — Pacific Science Center (PacSci) presents its new exhibit, Pollinator Path, to the public today. Pollinator Path encourages visitors to reflect on the intertwined and cyclical relationship between plants, pollinators, animals, and themselves. PacSci worked closely with Owen Oliver (Quinault / Isleta Pueblo) of Headwater People to create this outdoor exhibit with a Native-led interpretive approach.
“Pollinator Path is important because it centers Indigenous stories that have been told in and outside of the Pacific Northwest,” said Oliver. “Pollinators are a piece of these stories that call us to reflect on how and if we are being good stewards to our non-human kin. Chinuk Wawa (Chinook Jargon) used here highlights a collaboration of Native/non-Native words and syntax in the Northwest. I wanted to use it here to emphasize the vast and unique Indigenous languages that are still spoken and being revitalized in Washington.”
Indigenous knowledge, historically excluded and still underrepresented in STEM, takes center stage in this multi-sensory exhibit, such as the story of the “three sisters”— corn, beans, and squash — that have long been planted together, highlighting Indigenous agricultural expertise and tradition. Berries, ferns, and other native plants used for food and medicinal purposes also attract native pollinators such as birds and bees.
“Supporting community-driven narratives is just one way that Pacific Science Center’s exhibits prioritize inclusion and representation. Collaborations such as the Pollinator Path are a step towards developing deeper relationships with Indigenous communities, who have had ties to this land since time immemorial,” said Isabelle Heyward, Director of Exhibits at PacSci. “We have a lot to learn. I hope the Pollinator Path inspires curiosity in our guests about different ways of knowing and being, and about the environment we live in, its history, and the impacts we all have on one another.”
Native plant, pollinator, and animal names that have been used for millennia — and are still used today — by local and regional Indigenous communities will be on display, and Chinuk Wawa, a Native Pacific Northwest language, will be written, read, and heard throughout the exhibit.
Lastly, I am happy to announce that I am the inaugural artist in residence for the yəhaw̓ land rematriation project. In 2022, yəhaw̓ bought land 1.5 acres of land in Rainier Beach. The land is going to be used to empower Indigenous creatives. Right now, I am constructing a braided essay about the land plot and the surrounding areas with a focus of calendric motifs. I will be presenting my essay and a lecture of the work at the end of summer 2024.
If you want to learn more about yəhaw̓, they are linked here.
With that, I will leave with you all with taqʷšəblu, telling the story about lifting the sky, and why the word yəhaw̓ can heal us all.
Owen, As usual, a thoughtful and provocative post. And, of course, congratulations on your for and with the City. Hope all is well. David