Re-Indigenizing Ecological Consciousness and the Interconnectedness to Indigenous Identities [1 ed.] 9781666911022, 9781666911039

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Re-Indigenizing Ecological Consciousness and the Interconnectedness to Indigenous Identities

Environment and Religion in Feminist-Womanist, Queer, and Indigenous Perspectives

Series Editor Gabrie’l Atchison ‌‌Environment and Religion in Feminist-Womanist, Queer, and Indigenous Perspectives is a series that explores the subject of ecofeminism from feminist-womanist, queer, and indigenous perspectives. The governing assumption of the series is that ecofeminism is not only a mode of scholarly discourse and analysis, but also a hub for social formation and action. What distinguishes this series in particular is that it focuses on ecofeminism as a disciplinary matrix through which the voices of women, particularly women of color, and indigenous peoples can speak from their religious and spiritual traditions and practices to address the environmental challenges and concerns of the age. Volumes in this series will attend to the environmental and ecological issues that impact women, people of color, and indigenous populations, as these communities are, in almost all respects, the most immediately threatened by contemporary climate and ecological changes and catastrophes. Works in the series will focus on the history; scholarly resources and perspectives; constructive practices; religious, spiritual, and natural traditions from which these voices speak; and how these can provide alternative narratives, illuminate hidden agendas, and generate resistance to environmental and religious racism and exploitation. Titles in the series Re-Indigenizing Ecological Consciousness and the Interconnectedness of Indigenous Identities, edited by Michelle Montgomery Ecotheology and Love: The Converging Poetics of Sohrab Sepehri and James Baldwin, by Bahar Davary Ecowomanism at the Panamá Canal: Black Women, Labor, and Environmental Ethics, by Sofía Betancourt Mapping Gendered Ecologies: Engaging with and beyond Ecowomanism and Ecofeminism, edited by K. Melchor Quick Hall and Gwyn Kirk In the Name of the Goddess: A Biophilic Ethic, by Donna Giancola

Re-Indigenizing Ecological Consciousness and the Interconnectedness to Indigenous Identities Edited by Michelle Montgomery

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www​.rowman​.com 86–90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE Copyright © 2023 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available ISBN 978-1-66691-102-2 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-66691-103-9 (electronic) The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Contents

Foreword vii Bill Thomas Chapter One: Traditional Ecological Knowledges: An Antidote to Destruction 1 Daniel Wildcat Chapter Two: Nā Mele Kūʻē Hōkūlani Rivera



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Chapter Three: The World and the West Jasmine Neosh



Chapter Four: Reflecting on Environmental Narratives: In Order to Address the Legacy of Settler Colonial Structures Painted on the Rocks is the Story of My Beginning Pah-Tu Pitt

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Chapter Five: Indigenous Moral Epistemologies and Eco-Critical Race Theory Michelle Montgomery

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Chapter Six: Ripples and Ribbons: Indigenizing Apiculture and Pollinator Stewardship Melanie Kirby

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Chapter Seven: Indigenous Feminisms and Environmentalism in Care of Place Paulette Blanchard

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Chapter Eight: Queer Indigeneity: Decolonizing our Relationships to Build a Sense of Belonging Melissa Watkinson-Schutten and Michael H. Chang‌‌‌

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Contents

Chapter Nine: Building Sustainability by Creating Belonging Merisa Jones Chapter Ten: Restoring the Chehalis Story: An Indigenous Approach to Reclaiming and Re-Centering a Tribal History Mary DuPuis Chapter Eleven: Politicizing Our Waters: An Examination of the Boldt Decision’s Role in Anti-Indian Activism Drew Slaney Index



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About the Editor and Contributors



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Foreword Bill Thomas

This publication is a rare gift. And this foreword is a reflection of my thoughts about this very moving and forward-looking, exceptional collection of young indigenous leaders bravely speaking their truths, knowingly subjecting their thoughts and beliefs to public scrutiny. These stories evoke the spirit of the great Polynesian navigators: great courage with a deep commitment to taking the risk of entering into the unknown, guided by the ideals of a just future for all their relatives—for everyone—sometimes with only a vision of the destination, but armed with the knowledge that the true risk is not taking the risk at all. With the strength and tenacity of ancestors that course through their veins, they stay the course while navigating through the turbulent seas ahead of them. Despite the challenges ahead, they understand and embrace the importance and beauty of the knowledge within their ancestral dances and chants and the wisdoms of the stories that have been passed on to them, continually finding the inspiration and joy that accompanies them as they continue their journeys. The authors are story weavers, weaving their threads, moving in unison, their collective threads coalescing into a tome akin to a fine mat or blanket. Every word is imbued with the energy, spirit, commitment, intention, and soul that has brought everyone together in singular purpose to tell their stories. In doing so, the mana—the power of ancestral wisdoms and the lessons that lie therein—are guides that inform their vision of the future. Like weaving, the ancestral knowledges, skills, and wisdoms that have been passed to each succeeding generation point to the universal condition of their connections to each other and the land that forms the foundations of their relationships to their places; the connections back to those who have previously walked this earth, to the spiritual and physical realms and the social and cultural relationships that define who they are. Messages of despair, violence, and disconnection vii

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accompanied by those of hope, peace, and reconnection. Stories of voyages of respect for all of their relatives. These are the stories that remind us that we are all siblings and that we all have the reciprocal responsibility of caring for each other; both the living and non-living relatives. The totality of those that take care of us. All part of the messages contained within these stories. More succinctly said, in the beautiful words of my dear friend, my brother, and my amazing mentor—Dr. Papali’i Failautusi Avegalio: As an older tree that has sought to provide shade for seedlings and young saplings from the direct heat of the sun for decades, the saplings are now of that strength and energy to thrive without it. My role has been fulfilled as shade in accordance with the Polynesian beliefs of the Great Cycle & Nurturing of Life, Spirituality and Wisdom; guided by ‘Tofa Ma’mao’ (Vision wisdom) of engaging with humility, embracing with respect, sustaining with aloha and healing with forgiveness. I am inspired and fulfilled with the many young trees that have benefited by the shade of wisdom from elders, many whom I have been humbled and privileged to meet and weave forward on my journey. The time to transition from protective shade to nourishment and support for the young ones is now. The saplings are now resilient trees of Mother Earth’s Indigenous people. (Failautiusi Avegalio, personal communication, June 6, 2022)

These resilient trees are the leaders that we have been fortunate to teach and to learn from. As another close friend and brother, Dr. Dan Wildcat reminds us, “Everyone should be a teacher. Live with respect to and for life” (Daniel Wildcat, personal communication, March 17, 2022). Let us continue to nourish and support these trees, always with respect and love for our children, grandchildren, and those yet to be born.

Chapter One

Traditional Ecological Knowledges An Antidote to Destruction Daniel Wildcat

In the strictest sense, or should I say in our senses, traditional ecological knowledges (TEKs) represent deep spatial experiential knowledges embedded in language, stories, songs, ceremonies, and everyday customs and habits emergent from the symbiotic relationship of Peoples and places.1 Today, the crises we face throughout the institution’s modernity advancements bear the birthmarks of a totalizing and universalizing Western worldview that encourages humankind to constantly ignore our human experience in the world. TEKs are the antidote to the dangerous and destructive forces of modernity and its 2.0 version, post-modernity. This brief reflection on TEKs suggests that because these knowledges must be experienced, respected, and recollected in the large life-system communities in which humankind remains a participant, albeit increasingly a dysfunctional one, the best point of entry for those living in the shallow experiential spaces of industrial and post-industrial societies to understand TEKs might not be through science, as conventionally practiced, but in the arts. TRADITIONAL ECOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGES Traditional ecological knowledges (TEKs) represent deep spatial experiential knowledges embedded in a People’s language, stories, songs, ceremonies, and everyday customs and habits. TEKs are emergent from the symbiotic relationship of Peoples and places over hundreds and thousands of years. I use the plural form of TEK because, as place-based knowledges, there are obviously many such knowledges and, strictly speaking, knowledge in the 1

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singular can only be applied when speaking of a particular People and place. TEKs are the antidote to the current anthropogenic destruction of life-systems on the earth for several reasons but the two explored here are its intrinsic characteristics of: (1) respect for diversity of both Peoples and places and (2) an attentiveness to experience in the world, beyond our creation and design, in which humankind participates—something I see in short supply in this age of technological homelessness and insulated ignorance. Let me begin by addressing my contention that the arts might be the best portal to understanding TEKs for those of us living in the shallow experiential spaces of industrial and post-industrial societies. For context, think Mary Shelley, Bjork, Pablo Neruda, Jeanette Winterson, Walt Whitman, Jaune Quick-to-see-Smith, Gary Snyder, Fatboy Slim, R. Carlos Nakai, and Allan Houser. Those familiar with the topic of TEKs may find this claim surprising, even controversial. The current literature on TEKs—these lifeway practices—almost always situates the discussion of TEKs in the context of their relationship to science. For this congresso audience, I want to make three points: first, I want to suggest humankind’s lack of attentiveness to our experience in the world (something unimaginable for TEK practitioners) may be the most serious failure and the cause of the growing global environmental crisis we currently face; secondly, artists may hold the key to making the public more attentive and connected to the world around them; and finally, I want to advance for consideration the controversial proposition that the act of making art has some affinity with the genesis of TEKs. On this last point, I want us to understand that TEKs are not static but constantly co-created in a symbiotic environment-culture nexus much like some art. The contemporary literature on TEKs often focuses on the similarity, difference, and epistemological status of these knowledges relative to science for good reason. The folks in the fields of ecology, environmental studies and science, physical and biological sciences, and now sustainability science, increasingly recognize that tribal Peoples understand the places they call home better than they do. Indigenous Peoples possess knowledge that the best trained natural scientist cannot acquire with their objectivist epistemologies and precise methodologies. Tribal TEK holders acquire their knowledge through a lifetime of attentiveness and mindfulness to the places—life-system communities—they consider their home. The scientists who recognize the genesis and practical usefulness of these knowledges—now often denominated as Indigenous Knowledges (IKs)— struggle mightily to figure out how to situate those knowledges into their science(s). The problem is that TEKs do not easily conform to experimental, dissective, survey- and model-driven methodologies, for, in all cases, the hallmark of these scientific methodologies is their operation and production of knowledge in controlled situations/environments. TEKs or IKs are

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the result of experience in open, uncontrolled, wild, or dare I say, “natural” environments, as opposed to knowledge resulting from a scientifically controlled experiment. The controls IK and TEK knowledge holders employ are previous experiences in well-known environments—something John Dewey in his Logic of Inquiry, may have come closer to understanding than any other Western thinker. Experience serves as the control in the acquiring of TEKs, but not merely an individual’s experience, rather the collective experience of a People transmitted inter-generationally through culture in its broadest sense—how we live. Just as experience serves as the control in the development of TEKs, I contend that, across the arts, we find individuals who produce and practice their arts in a similar experiential manner. For those of you in the language arts, I would like to offer a conjecture—a metaphor. The deep forest of words and stories that attracted many of you in some affective manner and where you chose to live often left you in wonder, without a clear path, but searching for one or even several paths which would allow you to move through this deep forest of words. In your reading and study—your movement through this deep forest wordscape—you found paths, some easily but others with difficulty, to write your way through the forest. In short, your experience—your attentiveness—gave you the confidence and knowledge to move around this wordscape without getting lost. Those of you who have studied the words and the stories of your literary elders have participated in an ancient transference of knowledge, too. The reason many writers do not like talking about their art and artists, in general, find such digressions awkward is that like the possessors of TEK or IK, they know that as powerful as words are, they are a poor substitute for knowing through experience. Understanding this point may be the most important revelation to come from the low order sharing of TEKs through words and pictures. This is not to discount the value of words or be dismissive of their power; rather, the intent is to redirect our understanding to where the power of words resides with respect to TEKs. The power resides in moving people to look for answers in the right places: out-of-doors in the world in which they participate daily. The emergence of TEK from that symbiotic nexus of a People and place or culture and environment/ecosystem is very much like the emergence of art created in the context of the environment an artist has moved through. I believe the best artists at some level seem to share an onto-methodology or being methodology in the emergence of their work. Of course, this discussion of the knowing is general, but the doing of the application of TEK is necessarily particular and unique to the environment, where a People and a place, co-produce TEK or IK. My point is: TEKs emerge experientially in much the

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same way art emerges from a symbiotic process between the artists and their environment. But how do we move those in industrial and post-industrial societies to see TEKs as something other than exotic, esoteric, or, worse yet, primitive technology of little use in solving the multiple crises we now face? The ability to communicate at an effective level that the environmental crisis we are currently facing is very difficult using science alone. Science will operate as science does, and the knowing it produces is important, too. Nothing stated here should be construed as a disparagement of science. My point is rather that the artist and their works, without the conventional operational controls of science, produce a different kind of experience and understanding—one potentially persuasive in disabusing the public of their romanticized views of “natives” and “nature.” To be clear, TEKs are emergent out of longstanding inter-generationally transmitted ways of living that are situated in the practical interwoven interaction between people and place. These non-anthropocentric knowledges are co-productions with other-than-human persons of the environment that constitutes home or a homeland for Indigenous Peoples. There is no one TEK for everyone applicable to everywhere. TEKs exist as diverse ways of knowing co-produced by Peoples and places inextricably connected in a symbiotic relationship. I am not addressing the practical, substantive content of TEKs (that will vary from place to place); I am emphasizing: first, the shared experiential character of TEKs and the making of art, which resides outside the epistemic confines and methodologies of mainstream science and second, the efficacy of art in moving people to experientially confront the crises we are now facing. For the majority of people living on the earth and not with her today, the role artists and their art will play in communicating the global environmental crises underway cannot be overemphasized—it is crucial from a practical standpoint. For what the alienated individuals of our modern industrial and post-industrial societies most want is to have a relationship, especially to feel a connection to other people, a place, and life, itself, in some manner beyond the commodified relationships and packages that are sold to them. Art can move people affectively, in their sentiments, their feelings, and effectively in suggesting ways human and ecological relationships can be developed into, what I call, systems of life enhancement. Art has the power—a soulful power—to call those folks situated in the industrial and post-industrial societies to re-engage with the world beyond our smart IT devices and shallow manufactured spaces—to explore the wisdom of the often taken for granted out-of-doors world full of relatives, not resources.

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For the possessors of TEKs, again, knowledge is the result of an inter-generationally transferred experience of people living in human communities understood as participants in the larger ecological communities where they are situated—not the result of external or imposed physical controls. The genesis and making of TEKs or IKs occur in deep spatial environments, where these knowledges emerge from the symbiotic nature-culture nexus in which humankind participates. TEKS reflect an integrated holistic way of thinking that is the product of what I called in Power and Place: Indian Education in America (Deloria and Wildcat 2001), a synthetic attentiveness. By synthetic attentiveness, I mean the ability to have all our senses simultaneously attuned to an environment— such that one can scan environments and identify movement and change at an environmental and/or systemic level. The character of human experience in non-industrial Indigenous tribal environments, where modest insulation and mediation exists between people and the larger life-systems in which we participate, is fundamentally different than that of people living in exclusively manufactured environments—the room full of mirrors—increasing numbers of humankind inhabit. Therefore, I hesitate to liken this synthetic attentiveness to what is called situational awareness because the development of situational awareness skills has been entirely developed to address combat and emergency situations. While one might argue that we are in the midst of a slow but certain global environmental emergency, unlike the current notion of situational awareness, TEKs frame observations in the context of generations of human experience in a place: for the holders of Indigenous knowledges, or tradition ecological knowledges, this deep spatial awareness and knowledge is inter-generationally handed down to those paying attention to the world around them. The environmental crisis we face seems so obvious: one wonders how people fail to see it. There are many reasons but the most difficult to see is the universalizing and scotoma-producing Western worldview that encourages humankind to constantly ignore our own experience in the world. It is this experiential ignorance that causes modern humankind to degrade and often destroy the very life systems on which our relatives and we depend. This destructive behavior is indeed non-sense, for those orchestrating the destruction typically have no idea what they are doing in any experiential context beyond their balance sheets. In modern societies, humans observe, analyze, and measure the world in the context of a narrow anthropocentric instrumental logic that seeks to control and manipulate features of ecosystems and environments before they ever know them in a deep-spatial experiential sense, thereby precluding the possibility of having anything other than an entirely abstract aesthetic appreciation

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of “nature” and/or an equally abstract sense of fear regarding the world we did not create. People possessing either of these responses to what they perceive as “nature” find it is impossible to see anything in the world beyond our necessary control or of the world beyond ourselves as capable of making us better, more mature human beings. As the song Olleh Submuloc says, “One cannot remember what you never knew—the world is tipped to one side let’s set it true” (Author’s original song). TEKs are the antidote to the mindless non-sense behavior surrounding us because they demand mindfulness and attentiveness to one’s situation in the world. They produce a cultural identity that makes one a part of ecological living systems. Thinking is by necessity focused on belonging not owning, understanding not controlling, and, most importantly, on caretaking not commodification activities. Serious consideration of the ancient wisdom held by tribal Peoples, unromanticized and appreciated for their practical approaches to living with landscapes and seascapes, is desperately needed in industrial and post-industrial societies. The TEK framework suggested here demands the honoring of the world as diverse landscapes and seascapes that expose one-size-fits-all technological and organizational solutions to our environmental crises as unrealistic and, therefore, impractical. Understanding TEKs forces us to realize that the homogenizing worldview of civilization and progress, which gives us tools for control, civilization, and capitalism (always presented as the result of an inexorable natural logic), makes seeing cooperative, complementary, and convivial relationships with the rich natural world, which humankind did not create, seem unrealistic and unnatural. The paradigm or worldview, now required, must understand that enacting solutions to the crises underway require the adoption of Indigenous metaphysics in our re-engagement with the world—something like Wes Jackson of the Land Institute suggested in his wonderful book, Becoming Native to this Place (1994). At least three basic principles are widely shared among Indigenous Peoples in North America. These principles, if critically examined, evaluated, and ultimately adopted, provide a paradigm shift that opens opportunities to understand and see the world in a radically different manner. Stated concisely, they amount to the following: first, humans live among relatives, not resources; second, we must always consider not only inalienable human rights but the inalienable human responsibilities we possess; and third, following the first two premises, our human relationships to the other-than-human persons/relatives with whom we share our lives are not merely guided by wise-use natural resource management plans, but by practices of respect. Natural resource strategies and now eco-system service approaches to the living systems promote anthropocentric notions of value which remove respect from their formulae and calculations. Respect, reverence, and the

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deep sense of beauty are problematic for those using eco-system services approaches to protecting natural systems precisely because what they do is irreducible to quantitative valuation. Even those doing excellent work in this area acknowledge these real, but intangible values of natural systems are problematic in the formulation of the value of the services natural systems perform. Once again, we find the affective dimensions of an artist’s work resonate more closely with the activities and results of TEK-holders’ work than that of some well-intentioned ecologists, environmental scientists, and engineers. One does not use their relatives—at least not in my family. If the only reason one visits family is when they want something, it will be quickly made clear you are not welcome. Modern humankind treats the natural world like an ATM where we constantly make withdrawals, and when we make deposits into this Earth ATM, they are toxic. Wealth among tribal Peoples is seldom measured in terms of the resources one controls and/or, possesses, but by the number of good relatives one has. To live well among relatives requires a keen attentiveness to those inalienable responsibilities tribal Peoples often communicate in their language, ceremonies, customs, habits, and songs. To be clear, I know of few people who value inalienable rights and liberties as much as tribal Peoples, but these rights are linked with inalienable responsibilities. Neither is understood as at odds with the other. Respect is linked to the first two principles. As my late colleague, Steve Pavlik, formulated this linkage, when one lives in a kin-centric world, respect and responsibility are the moral and ethical connective tissue of healthy living systems, i.e., communities. The kin-centric worldview focuses on relationships in a complex, one might even say entangled, set of relations that require constant evaluation of place in what the late John Mohawk referred to as the complex web of life. As we observe the cooptation of sustainability principles by the very corporations and powers that most threaten the life-systems of the earth, we must enact responses best characterized as resilience plus: An ability to not merely restore or bounce back from a disturbance or disaster to what existed before the perturbation, but to respond in a way that enriches our lives in the broadest sense. We must not only restore and sustain earth systems, but directly address our own culture-induced human immaturity if we hope to participate in and promote ecological systems of life-enhancement. The uncoupling of culture and ecology is the most dangerous aspect of all civilization projects. To my Yuchi way of thinking, TEKs represent what we most need in the antidote to destruction: an experiential induced humility concerning what we can and ought to do in the eco-cultural restoration required.

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The antidote to destruction that TEKs offer is found in their experiential epistemologies, which reject the invidious dichotomy between nature and culture. We are both, and the nature vs. culture riddle is solved in the recognition that life is enhanced when culture is emergent out of the natural systems of the earth—systems and communities that collectively promote appreciation for the diversity of environments and cultures. There are literally and figuratively grounds for hope, for those willing to engage their mind and reawaken their senses to “the world we used to live in,” as my friend and mentor Vine Deloria, Jr., entitled his final book (2006) and described the world before the Industrial Revolution and the flat screens of our information and communication technologies (ICTs) became the dominant features of the shallow experiential spaces of industrial and post-industrial societies many humans now inhabit. The Peoples and Places from which TEKs emerge have much to teach humankind about living well with the still beautiful eco-culturally diverse landscapes and seascapes of this planet. It is now time to listen to what these wisdom keepers—human and other-than-human relatives—can tell us about the world. A proponent of cultural realism once told me we still live in storytelling cultures. But today, the stories most of humankind hear are no longer told to us by our closest relatives living in communities sitting before or around a fire but are sold to us by corporations in 15- or 30-second sound bites aired 24–7 by information and communication outlets many of us watch on flat-screen devices. The antidote to the destruction we currently observe is all around us, but portals are needed to encourage people to step out-of-doors. Art can create the portals. Art has another invaluable characteristic, too. In creating portals to TEKs and IKs, it reminds us that knowledge is never static. As our landscapes and seascapes change, new knowledges will emerge—producing new deep-spatial knowledges. New activities today may become, in a place over time, new traditions, customs, habits, and features of culture. The environmental change we are now witnessing will require creative acts of Indigenuity. We must encourage multiple ways to communicate stories and move people to find the doors or portals to the remaining wisdom and beauty that surrounds us in a world filled with much ugliness too. Indigenous People rich in traditional ecological knowledge remind us that it is possible to live well with the lifesystems of the Earth if we open all the doors, physical and metaphysical, and think outside with our ancient relatives and wisdom-keepers.

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REFERENCES Deloria, Vine. 2006. The World We Used to Live in: Remembering the Powers of the Medicine Men. Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing. Deloria, Vine, and Daniel Wildcat. 2001. Power and Place: Indian Education in America. Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing. Jackson, Wes. 1994. Becoming Native to This Place. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky.

NOTE 1. Abstract of a paper (rev.) presented at the IV Congresso Internacional de Literatura e Ecocrítica, at Universidade Federal do Amazonas (UFAM)–Auditório Eulálio Chaves in Manaus, Amazonas (Brazil).

Chapter Two

Nā Mele Kūʻē Hōkūlani Rivera

Ua mau ke Ea o ka ‘āina i ka pono. —King Kamehameha III July 31, 1843 (Lā Hoʻihoʻi Ea)

The Hawaiian Islands and its People have faced countless apocalypses in the last century of colonization, from imported epidemics to American insurrection, to the concept of “ownership,” to military occupation and unrest, to human trafficking, to diaspora, to desecration of all kinds, and so on. These catastrophes have not only destabilized our Native population, but have also left us in a state such that modern Hawaiians’ perspectives of our lands vary drastically depending on which island, or even which towns, we come from. That is, if we grow up in our homelands at all. In the urban parts of Oʻahu, one may find themselves face-to-face with soul-numbing skyscrapers, bustling roads, and hundreds of thousands of tourists inundating the invasive economies that drive American seizure of our lands and “natural resources.” Here, land is commodified. In the thick forests of Hilo, Hawaiʻi Island, one may find a slower pace, but must witness the overcrowding of foreign birdsong and albizia tree canopies, in place of the island’s first, and once abundant, residents: the honeycreepers, the ‘alalā, and the koa (to name a very few). To the Hawaiian families who have been forced to leave the islands of their ancestors’ bones for any number of reasons spawning from our prolonged occupation, Hawaiʻi can seem more foreboding than the harshest continental winter. There once was a core belief that united all of us, stemming from the stories that told us our islands and all its inhabitants are our siblings. There was a reciprocity in this. Since the era of our first king, Kamehameha Paiʻea, 11

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generations of Hawaiians have been forced to treat our lands (and ourselves) as exploitable, just to survive. This mentality has been literally and figuratively beaten into generations, such that it is an active and constant choice for each Hawaiian today to resist the mental slumber colonization thrusts upon us; to remember who these islands are to us, what they are, and who we are because of them. Yet, as modern Hawaiians, we do not often have the luxury of sustaining ourselves on our lands, of celebrating our gods and customs in outward ways. Of rest. How can we re-indigenize the ways we think of ourselves in relation with our lands and each other, when we have bills to pay? How do we see our aquifers as the life source of the islands, when tainted metal piping and gated government lands isolate us from this truth? Fortunately for us, and our future generations, our ancestors gave us the answers. In the time when our knowledges were stored solely in our minds, and only communicated through spoken word, our ancestors said, “Nānā i ke kumu,”  (look to the source). They said, “I ka wā ma mua, i ka wā ma hope,” (the future lies in the past). Like other religious texts, the stories and chants of old Hawaiʻi hold lessons about life and our kuleana that are meant to withstand the test of time. It is with the poignant words our haku mele have left us over the ages that we can begin to re-center our consciousness back onto the love and care we share with our one hānau. Despite the tribulations we have faced in the era of colonization, there is a centuries-old chant that is, and has been, our guiding star back to our own sovereignty, if we have the courage to follow. It is called “ʻAuʻa ʻIa” and it was composed sometime in the early 1780s by a renowned haku mele of the time, Keaulumoku. ʻAuʻa ʻia e kama ē kona moku ʻO kona moku ē kama e ʻauʻa ʻia ʻO ke kama, kama, kama, kama i ka hulinuʻu ʻO ke kama, kama, kama, kama i ka huliau Hulihia pāpio a i lalo i ke alo Hulihia i ka imu O Tū Tamatiʻilohelohe (Keaulumoku cir. 1782)

During the time this chant was composed, the man known today as Kamehameha the Great had only just begun his war campaign as a lesser chief of Hawaiʻi Island. The unification of our islands under one kingdom was merely a battle plan. Hawaiians had also been in contact with European sailors like Captain Cook for just four years. Yet, the first two lines above are instructions for the Hawaiians then and now to observe our heritage and to retain our lands. Huli in Hawaiian signals a change, turn, or flip. In the last

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two lines above, Keaulumoku is prophesying, “overthrown will be the foundation, left lying face downward / overthrown on the coral beds of Kū with the sacred cord Makiʻilohelohe.” Later in the chant, he refers to the dedicated one from Keawe (or Moku o Keawe, another name for Hawaiʻi Island)—“ʻO Keawe ʻai kū, ʻai a laʻahia.” With thirteen lines, Keaulumoku introduced our first king to us and warned us about the downfall of our kingdom, before any of this had really begun to unfold. Revisiting the first lines of this chant, Keaulumoku does not tell us to simply allow our foundations to be overthrown without any resistance. Rather, in the motion one makes while dancing this hula pahu, we sweep a hand across our pae ʻāina and bring it back in a fist to our piko. Dancers and audiences are embodied in Keaulumoku’s instructions to hold onto our lands as tightly as we can muster. Our kingdom has been under siege for over a century, yet with each era of colonial violence, another generation breathes new life into the fight for our lands and for our very identity as Native Hawaiians, using the ancestral form of song and poetry. KAULANA NĀ PUA: THE OVERTHROW OF THE HAWAIIAN KINGDOM One of the darkest times in Hawaiian history has been the overthrow of our sovereign kingdom on January 17, 1893, at the hands of American businessmen. These same men held important seats in the Hawaiian government, but only truly cared about their own ventures, all of which caused great damage to the very foundations of the Hawaiian nation and our ways of life. In previous coups against Hawaiʻi, responsible parties were held accountable by their countries for the crimes they committed. However, this coup had been staged by the U.S. minister of Hawai’i, John Stevens, who manipulated the U.S. Navy into assuming aggressive and intimidating positions against the Hawaiian crown. Whether the U.S. government was aware of these actions, this was an international affair and one that could not easily be reversed without global humiliation. Once these horrific actions took place, U.S. representatives did not immediately oppose them (if at all), because they saw the economic gain involved with occupying the hub of the Pacific. The true colors of a government built on imperial capitalism and patriarchy. Due to the conditions of the Bayonet Constitution, signed under duress by King David Kalākaua on July 1, 1887, it was no secret that tensions were rising between the Hawaiian People and American business. It also did not come as a surprise when the same insurgents (who called themselves the “Committee of Safety”) overthrew the Hawaiian government under threat

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of bloodshed. During the time, the Hawaiian People made up about 40 percent of the population in all the islands. Queen Liliʻuokalani had no other choice but to sign the treaty of cession under protest to protect her people. Yet, the queen had faith that the United States would react as other countries had when their representatives insolently staged coups against the kingdom: arrest the perpetrators and restore authority to the crown. She wrote, “Now to avoid any collision of armed forces, and perhaps the loss of life, I do this under protest, and impelled by said force yield my authority until such time as the Government of the United States shall, upon facts being presented to it, undo the action of its representatives and reinstate me in the authority which I claim as the constitutional sovereign of the Hawaiian Islands” (Sai 2011). In the years that both preceded and succeeded the overthrow, the remaining forty thousand Native Hawaiians took similar actions as their queen. They protested, showing at every turn that the corruption in government due to American imposition was not slipping under any radar and would not be tolerated. For instance, after the Bayonet Constitution was signed under duress, and with no repercussions for the criminals, a Hawaiian man named Robert William Wilcox organized the Liberal Patriotic Association, whose mission was to restore power to King Kalākaua. This led to a failed, yet significant rebellion against those who held the king and our lands politically captive. It showed that, despite all odds, Hawaiians would rise up against anyone who threatened our kingdom and our home. People also showed their loyalty to Hawaiʻi in alternative ways, such as practicing Hawaiian cultural traditions in secret, traveling the continental U.S. to seek the sympathy and loyalty of government officials, and creating massive quilts (kapakuiki hae Hawaiʻi) that would bear proud, bright Hawaiian flags and the coat of arms. Once the overthrow had taken place, organizations such as Hui Aloha ʻĀina formed to help the fight in restoring Queen Liliʻuokalani to her rightful throne. In 1897—four years after the overthrow, and while the U.S. still deliberated on whether justice or military prowess should prevail—native Hawaiians of Hui Aloha ʻĀina mobilized to collect signatures for a petition against annexation, written in both English and Hawaiian. Of the forty thousand remaining Kanaka Maoli, “More than 21,000 signatures of individuals opposing annexation were recorded. . . . Another set of petitions for the restoration of the monarchy were circulated by Hui Kālaiʻāina and included 17,000 signatures.” (KS Ho’okahua Cultural Vibrancy Group, 2021). After the 556-page petition from Hui Aloha ʻĀina was presented to the U.S. Senate, only 46 senators still rooted for annexation. The motion for annexation was defeated in February 1898—a moment of blissful triumph for the Hawaiian People. Unfortunately, the motion for annexation was quickly revived with the opening of the Spanish-American War. There was nothing

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Hawaiians could do to convince President McKinley and his cabinet to undo the illegal seizure and occupation of Hawaiʻi. While much of the political actions and protests seemed to be focused solely on the restoration of the crown, there was indeed an ancient, yet ever-present calling for Hawaiians to keep their lands. A little over a century after “ʻAuʻa ʻIa” had been written and our foundations overthrown as prophesied, the love for our homelands continued in the songs of our people. Kaulana nā pua aʻo Hawaiʻi Kūpaʻa ma hope o ka ʻāina Hiki mai ka ʻelele o ka loko ʻino Palapala ʻānunu me ka pākaha . . . ʻAʻole mākou aʻe minamina I ka puʻu kālā o ke aupuni Ua lawa mākou i ka pōhaku I ka ʻai kamahaʻo o ka āina (Prendergast 1893)

In 1893, Ellen Kehoʻohiwaokalani Wright Prendergast wrote the song “Mele ʻAi Pōhaku” (or The Stone-Eating Song), which we now know as “Kaulana Nā Pua,” in opposition to the annexation of Hawaiʻi. This song was highly significant, because it showed both the surviving craft of Kanaka Maoli and the everlasting commitment to our lands over any type of capital. It was once known as “The Stone-Eating Song,” because the third verse (shown above as the second verse) translates to, “We do not value / The government’s sum of money / We are satisfied with the stones / Astonishing food of the land.” This was a song that challenged the self-proclaimed “Provisional Government” outright, voicing the heartbreak and defiance of the Hawaiian People across the islands and abroad. Today, “Kaulana Nā Pua” shows the true power of capturing what we have learned and felt over time in song, as it remains one of the most well-known mele in the islands. Through this time, Kanaka Maoli faced our own version of an apocalypse. We were losing our sovereignty and our families, both human and non-human, at an astonishing rate. Yet, Hawaiians learned that we will never stop fighting for our nation, no matter the odds, until justice is served or the last of us dies. In the first verse of “Kaulana Nā Pua,” the lines speak of the famous children of Hawaiʻi, who are ever loyal to the lands. The verse also names the evil and the greed taking over our kingdom through “legal” documents. Despite a long history of cultural and intellectual loss, the love for, and loyalty to our relatives has fueled our fight up to this time and into the next century of kūʻē.

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MELE O KAHOʻOLAWE: PROTECTING THE ISLAND OF KANALOA From the time of the Spanish-American War, the United States understood the military advantage of stationing warships full of troops at Pearl Harbor and occupying the executive authority of the Hawaiian Islands. From the presence of warships in the harbor, originally named Puʻuloa, the once pristine waters became so polluted that, even today, locals are warned not to eat any of the shellfish from the area. From the presence of the U.S. military at all, Hawaiʻi witnessed a brutal attack on the harbor by Japanese warplanes on December 7, 1941. When the U.S. involved itself with World War II after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, two realities came back to the forefront of our occupation: the U.S. government saw Hawaiʻi as a property to do with as they pleased, and our islands would suffer the consequences of international wars in the Pacific Basin if the U.S. were involved. Today, we are still the sacrificial lamb of the United States. The first reality became undeniable when, in 1925, the United States began using our kulāiwi as a range for target practice (Dunford 1995). Similar to their treatment of Bikini Atoll with nuclear weapon testing, the U.S. military began conducting military maneuvers on the island of Kahoʻolawe. The assault on our island was so bad—especially during World War II, when the U.S. declared martial law in Hawaiʻi and subleased bombing rights—it became known as the “Target Isle.” In American eyes, this was the best place to practice destruction, because no humans lived there. However, Kahoʻolawe not only carries a key piece of our history as Kanaka Maoli, but it is, or was, also home to endemic species of birds and plants, like the Laysan Duck and Kanaloa kahoolawensis. From a Kanaka Maoli perspective, Kahoʻolawe is the ʻiewe of all the islands after they were born from our gods Papahānaumoku and Hina. In the fields of Western medicine and obstetrics/gynecology, which have been steeped in misogyny and genocide for centuries, the placenta is viewed as a discardable “biohazard.” From this lens, Kahoʻolawe may seem insignificant. Discardable. In Hawaiian traditions, the ʻiewe does not just mean “placenta,” as it also refers to the afterbirth, the infant, and the relative. Kahoʻolawe is our relative. In speaking of the placenta, Hawaiian cultural traditions call for it to be buried in a significant spot for the family, to tether the newborn to its home forever. One ʻōlelo noʻeau says, “Kuʻu ēwe, kuʻu piko, kuʻu iwi, kuʻu koko,” which translates to, my umbilical cord, my navel, my bones, my blood. Melehina Groves, director of Cultural Engagement for the KS Hoʻokahua Vibrancy Group, describes the significance of this proverb best when she

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writes, “While it is a very simple statement, this ʻōlelo noʻeau powerfully and eloquently illustrates the connection between the physical and the spiritual in the Native Hawaiian worldview” (Groves n.d.). Amid the Hawaiian Renaissance, Native Hawaiians began to relearn the significance and the spirituality of place. As this generation of Kanaka Maoli awoke to their colonial reality, many could not sit idly as the U.S. Navy continued to bomb Kahoʻolawe. The violence had already spread in 1969 when a stray ordinance hit the coast of West Maui, prompting the then U.S. representative Patsy Mink to motion for a ceasefire (Protect Kaho’olawe ‘Ohana n.d.). After seven more years of raising awareness and protesting, nine individuals successfully landed on the shores of Kahoʻolawe to put a stop to the continued target practice. Their presence caught local and national attention, having taken place on the tails of the occupation of Alcatraz by the American Indian Movement in 1969. Yet, rather than call for a ceasefire, the U.S. government decided on a meager site survey to determine the validity of Native Hawaiians’ demands. Unfortunately, in 1977, while completing another round of protests, two of the most prominent organizers of the Protect Kahoʻolawe ʻOhana were lost at sea off the shores of Kahoʻolawe. The deaths of George Helm and Kimo Mitchell, both in their mid-20s, sparked a new sense of love and sorrow in our people. While heartbreaking, it showed that despite everything, Hawaiians were willing to sacrifice their lives for the lands that have sacrificed so much for us. It was the death of his son that led Harry Kunihi Mitchell to write the somber, yet powerful song, “Mele o Kahoʻolawe.” Aloha kuʻu moku o Kahoʻolawe Mai kinohi kou inoa o Kanaloa (Mitchell 1977)

Unlike other mele kūʻē, “Mele o Kahoʻolawe” has a slower pace that honors the weight of Mitchell’s sacrifice, as well as the bittersweetness that comes with loving this place so fiercely, while it is destroyed by foreigners and their weapons. “Kanaloa,” Mitchell calls, to remind it of its original name, taken from our god of the oceans. Kohemalamalama Lau kanaka ʻole (Mitchell 1977)

While in this place of grief and anger, there is another conversation urging to be heard. One surrounding the exploitation of both our lands and our

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women. “Kohemalamalama,” translating to “the brilliant vagina,” is another name for Kaho’olawe. The utter depth of settler colonial patriarchy becomes clear when we see how poorly this land had been treated, only because no man lived there or “benefitted” from the land in ages. If not life, in this invasive mindset, then violence and death. Hiki mai na pua E hoʻomalu mai (Mitchell 1977)

Following the line of patriarchal influence, these lines tell of the nine young men who arrived on the shores of Kaho’olawe to stand in the way of American desecration. It took men for the United States to reconsider their violent practices. Similarly, today’s fights for women’s rights and protection—rights that disproportionately affect Black, Indigenous, Kanaka, and other women of color—requires men to actively resist the patriarchy they’ve come to take for granted, lest these human rights violations become “women’s issues.” Alu like kākou Lāhui Hawaiʻi Mai ka lā hiki mai i ka lā kau aʻe (Mitchell 1977)

As it was then, and as it is today, this restoration of our Indigenous identities, our respect and care for our women and more-than-human relatives, and our sovereignty, is only possible when together we commit to our future. Despite the fifty year gap between the composition of this song and now, we must still be reminded e alu like mai kākou. Kū paʻa a hahai hōʻikaika na kanaka Kau liʻi makou nui (Mitchell 1977)

As a child being taught the meaning of strength (ikaika), I was always guided toward the stone walls our ancestors had built for the foundations of their homes, farms, and temples. In this second verse, Mitchell tells us all to band together as the Hawaiian nation, from sunup to sundown, and to follow the example of the Hawaiians who have come before us. In Hawaiian, he sings, “We are but few in numbers / But our love for the land is unlimited.” Ke aloha no ka ʻāina . . . Imua nā pua. Lanakila Kahoʻolawe

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(Mitchell 1977)

In the final part of the song, there is conversation on the civil strife Hawaiian youth are up against, and in the legal realm, our protests may often be interpreted as centered around access and rights. Yet, when we take a closer look at the lyrics of our resistance songs, we see that the fight has always been for the protection of our homelands. We are famous both for these fights and for our collective belief that justice with prevail if we are at the helm of this movement, because we love our lands just that much. In honor of these brave men, cultural groups continued to advocate and to organize voyages to Kahoʻolawe in protest of the bombings, while the U.S. gathered data on the remnants of traditional sites on the island. In 1981, 540 traditional sites were found on the island, and the next year, Kahoʻolawe witnessed its first Makahiki celebration in decades. In 1993, the bombings were officially halted, and Kahoʻolawe was designated as a natural and cultural reserve. The road toward a clean Kahoʻolawe is still uphill today, but we continue this kuleana of hoʻoponopono—making right—as is our birthright. MAUI MEDLEY: REVIVING NĀ WAI ʻEHĀ Ola i ka wai—water is life.

Over the decades of slow and insidious encroachment across Hawaiian lands, American businesses claimed many of our natural resources as their own. One example of this involved Nā Wai ʻEhā, the four streams of central Maui. In traditional times, this system of waterways fed freshwater into roughly thirty-five thousand acres of lo’i kalo that sustained Maui families and trade, provided clean water to the fishponds of North Maui, and supplied nutrients to the sea creatures just beyond the ponds. It provided such rich environments that many endemic and indigenous species thrived from the headwaters of Mauna Kahālāwai to the sea. All of this changed when the Wailuku Sugar Company diverted the headwaters to feed the inefficient crop that is sugarcane. In fact, while kalo is a crop that improves the water it uses, all water that flows into sugarcane crops leaves the crops as “wastewater” that must be treated before it can be returned to the natural water cycle. Once Wailuku Sugar Company built various dams and water gates to divert the flow back in the 1860s, those who once depended on these bountiful streams were left in dire straits. As the organization Hui o Nā Wai ʻEhā recounts, “Many families had to leave their homes and farmlands [some having been ‘kuleana lands’] because the stream water resources that sustained

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them had diminished or completely disappeared. Thousands of acres of kalo lands once fed by these streams to sustain a vast Hawaiian population became dominated by the sugarcane plantation industry. Kalo was no longer the staple food and stream habitats for native aquatic species completely vanished” (Hui o Nā Wai ʻEhā, n.d.). Due to the traditional ways of viewing water and other parts of the ecosystem as relatives that lend themselves for our temporary needs, Hawaiians were met with a new and abrasive way of thinking when American businesses began imposing ownership laws for their own advantage and over things so essential to life as water. Maui saw an extreme decline, not just in farming, but in native flora and fauna. Considering the proper protocols for this stream system from a Hawaiian perspective, once Wailuku Sugar Company began seeing a decline in business, they should have relinquished the water to their original streambeds. Instead, this company acted on their capital greed and either created one business after another that would use the same water or leased the water they were diverting to new businesses. For centuries, these sorts of businesses abused our freshwater resources across the pae ʻāina, but finally in 2003, Nā Wai ʻEhā found a glimmer of hope. In 2003, Hui o Nā Wai ʻEhā was established as a nonprofit organization, and they wasted no time in submitting a petition to the Commission on Water Resource Management to amend the instream flow standards for these four streams. In the same year, contested case hearings began with the delivery of over fifty witnesses and testimonies to the desecration of the ecosystems that once resided in or near Nā Wai ʻEhā, as well as the history of family farms or fishponds that depended on this water. The court case lasted for a grueling seventeen years and included appealing to the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court, fighting fines that were meant to threaten generational farmers, conducting multiple studies on water quality and instream flow, and many other delays or obstacles. Finally, in 2021, The Maui News reported that, “After 17 years in what [Hokuao] Pellegrino calls the largest water rights case in the history of Hawaii, the commission issued this week a lengthy decision and order on Na Wai ‘Eha water use that officially recognizes appurtenant rights, including kalo farming and other traditional and customary practices” (Cerizo, 2021). In those seventeen years it took for this case to be settled, eighteen of the hui water applicants had passed away while waiting for these very rights to be restored. However, because of their unrelenting aloha for this stream system, Maui will see a new dawn for its aquatic inhabitants and dependent crops. Specifically, just over half of the 3.2 million gallons of water per day that was reverted to Nā Wai ʻEhā by the commission will be for “in-stream habitat and related benefits; 28 percent for reasonable and beneficial uses, such as diversified agriculture; 14 percent for kalo cultivation; 7 percent for municipal water supply; and 0.09 percent for domestic use” (Cerizo 2021).

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During this period of almost twenty years, Hawaiians were once again reminded what water—especially freshwater—truly means to us as a People who inhabit islands with natural underground filtration systems, surrounded by the vast ocean. Looking at the data of thrivancy in the Nā Wai ʻEhā area from traditional times to the early 2000’s, the knowledge that water is life took on a whole new light. Protests, marches, widespread advocacy, and, of course, legal actions were indeed effective methods for Hawaiians to protect these special waters against exploitation, such that there was no need to compose what has already been written. For a single rallying point, we could simply look to past mele, such as “Maui Medley” by Israel Kamakawiwoʻole: Ka‘apuni ‘oe a puni o Maui E ‘ike i nā wai ‘ehā (Kamakawiwo’ole 1995)

Traditionally, much of our ancestor’s compositions were deeply rooted in the personality of a place. For Nā Wai ‘Ehā, Braddah Iz comes back to that tradition and tells us to look at the four waters. Observe them and the things that make them unique from one another. O Waikapū, o Wailuku, o Waiehu Kaulana nā wai ‘ehā (Kamakawiwo’ole 1995)

Nā Wai ʻEhā carries not only the life waters that sustain much of Maui, but also a story of the Hawaiian People. These four streams were often the places of great political gatherings or ceremonies, and even battles. Hence, Braddah Iz points to how renowned this water system is, by history alone. O Waihe‘e i ka makani Kilio‘opu O nā wai kaulana ‘ia a‘o ku‘u ‘āina (Kamakawiwo’ole 1995)

In “Maui Medley,” it is highly significant for Braddah Iz to name each stream as integral parts of Maui, for their beauty, their peace, and their history. Though not specifically designated as a mele kūʻē, this song reminds us of the gifts we are given by our lands every day. For many Kanaka, this gentle song of celebration for Maui provided a deep sense of empowerment. This song thus continues the legacy of love our People have for our place and solidifies the glory we should feel in protecting our sacred places for generations to come.

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KŪ HAʻAHEO: A NATION REBORN Kū haʻaheo e kuʻu Hawaiʻi Mamaka kaua o kuʻu ʻāina (Wong 2020)

Despite the battles to revive Hawaiian ways of life in the 1960s and 70s, Hawaiʻi once again seemed to go into a slumber as its people faced the twenty-first century head on. While great leaps forward in language revitalization and natural habitat restoration took place in the first decade of this century, the fervency of action had begun to fade. It was such that construction plans for both a Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) on a sacred summit and a Honolulu rail system that crossed multiple ancient burial grounds were approved by the state government without much public uproar. Many Kanaka like me believe the chant Kū Haʻaheo has begun another rebirth, as it lyrically begins by urging us not just to wake up, but to stand for Hawai’i! ʻO ke ehu kakahiaka o nā ʻōiwi o Hawaiʻi nei No kuʻu lāhui e hāʻawi pau a i ola mau (Wong 2020)

It was (and is) the great spirit of Kumu Hinaleimoana Wong, in both her educational work and her political advocacy, that renewed that bursting energy of the nation. Her passion spread to the entire pae ʻāina when, in 2014, the University of Hawaiʻi (UH) made plans to begin construction on TMT atop the sacred peak of Mauna Kea. Currently atop Mauna Kea, there are thirteen telescopes and facilities, some of which are entirely outdated and/or have been mismanaged for decades now. While these telescopes have given astronomers around the globe invaluable information about the night sky and deep space, the mismanagement has led to multiple major leakage events, in which gallons of waste and toxins invaded the most fragile ecosystem in Hawaiʻi and continues to pose a threat to the watershed of Hawaiʻi Island. In 2014, UH and the state government conducted the first attempt at a groundbreaking ceremony for the TMT and were met with great resistance from the Hawaiian People. The resistance was so great, in fact, that plans to build the telescope were pushed back as far as 2019. During this period of five years, decades of environmental audits had come to light that reported the poor fiscal responsibility displayed by UH, as well as poor rent collection, a lack of dedication to community and

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the Hawaiian culture, poor grounds management, lack of care and safety for personnel, and the failure to properly manage or decommission telescopes (Office of Hawaiian Affairs 2018). These failures to care for the ecosystem of the summit are not just environmental issues. In a 2019 interview for USA Today, Lanakila Mangauil expressed, “They [the telescopes] are very detrimental to this ecosystem, which is directly connected to why it is detrimental culturally” (Lam 2019). Mangauil captured the exact reason Kanaka Maoli need to protect this sacred place—our lands and our cultural identities are one and the same. It is because of this deep intertwining between Kanaka and our ʻāina that in July of 2019, when we received the initial call to head toward the mountain in anticipation of the construction crews, hundreds of protectors arrived. From kupuna to keiki, our lāhui gathered to block further desecration, approved by the occupying state government—the legacy of the Provisional Government. In the first days, nine kiaʻi chained themselves to the cattle guard on the access road to the summit, and thirty-four kupuna were arrested in place of the young people. The protection of Mauna Kea was unlike many of the protests Hawaiians held in the past, as it gave us an opportunity to revive our connections to these lands, to our lehulehu, and to our ancestors who have passed. It gave us the chance to shake off the sleep we had fallen into, and to unite with one song in our hearts, “Kū Haʻaheo.” E nāue imua e nā pokiʻi a e inu wai ʻawaʻawa E wiwoʻole a hoʻokūpaʻa ʻaʻohe hope e hoʻi mai ai (Wong 2020)

In this mele, Kumu Hina calls upon the young people, the warriors of every island to move forward, and to drink of the bitter waters as King Kamehameha ordered his troops in the battle of ʻĪao Valley. A naʻi wale nō kākou kaukoe mai i ke ala Auē ke aloha ʻole a ka malihini (Wong 2020)

Similar to “Maui Medley,” this oli expresses the fervency of our resistance not by shouting and banging our heads, but rather by conveying this tone of sincerity and faith that one cannot help but be brought to tears. We as Kanaka cannot trust our state’s government to uphold our best interests, so we must turn to the path of our ancestors in resisting the heartlessesness of foreign entitlement.

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E lei mau i lei mau kākou e nā mamo aloha I lei wehi ʻaʻaliʻi wehi nani o kuʻu ʻāina (Wong 2020)

While that same heartbreak is palpable in this oli, Kumu Hina reminds us that we are worthy of the love these lands have held for us for thousands of years. We are worthy of the abundance these lands have kept safe for us, which is why we should fight—not to hold this anger settler colonialism has instilled in us, but to hold onto this cosmological love that it’s tried to rip away. Hoe a mau hoe a mau no ka pono sivilia A hoʻihoʻi hou ʻia mai ke kūʻokoʻa (Wong 2020)

As we sang together for our Mauna, whether it was at the access road, the state capitol, or across the continental U.S., we were telling ourselves to kū haʻaheo—to stand proud as Hawaiians—and to continue paddling for our beloved lands until our sovereignty is returned. The power of this mele is tangible, just as it is for “ʻAuʻa ʻIa.” In fact, to summon all that power as fuel for our kūʻē, we sang, chanted, and danced every resistance song we knew. When the protests began, I remember showing up to the Hawaiʻi state capitol building and meeting Kumu Hina for the first time. We sang her song, we danced to “ʻAuʻa ʻIa,” and we wept. We wept with the frustration that is fighting a government that claims it’s “protecting” you, with the pride in each other to be alive together as kiaʻi, and for our ancestors whom we’ve lost over the centuries of colonial violence. By the time the novel coronavirus shut down Hawaiʻi in March of 2020, thousands of Kanaka and other Indigenous allies had come to the mauna in solidarity and service. In fact, the base camp, called Puʻuhonua o Puʻuhuluhulu, became such a sanctuary that organizers were able to open a free temporary university, a childcare center, a medic center, a dining area with donated food, and other kinds of infrastructure. Organizers also held ceremonies and protocols under Kapu Aloha, teaching us what it means to be aligned with our spirituality as modern Hawaiians; to reclaim the night sky for our own cultural connection. At the base of our culture’s very piko, the heart of a nation was reborn. Despite the continuation of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is our responsibility now to take care of this new beginning, if not for us, then for the health and welfare of our children and our islands.

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ALL HAWAIʻI STANDS TOGETHER The Hawaiian People have inhabited our islands for millennia now, collecting lessons and stories in songs along the way that teach us how to be in relation with our ʻāina. While our nation has faced periods of dormancy, merely surviving colonization, and while the current moment in time from which I write this chapter feels like a never-ending half-sleep/half-delirium, it is crucial, now more than ever, to remember why we as Kanaka Maoli must continue to protect our lands. For when we find ourselves in dormancy, we miss opportunities to hoʻoponopono before desecration becomes unavoidable. One of these moments that has recently come to light and may remain on our horizon for generations to come, is the recent uncovering of fuel leakage from a U.S. Naval storage facility on Oʻahu. Similar to the oil spills across the continental U.S. and Canada, this fuel leak is an ecological disaster. Thousands of gallons have tainted Oʻahu’s main aquifer that provides clean water to hundreds of thousands of the island’s residents, having caused illness for years without any answers. The general public received the news just two months before the close of 2021, but this phenomenon has continued without systemic notice—or perhaps, with willful ignorance—for years, resulting in the leakage of at least 180 thousand gallons since the facility’s construction (Sierra Club of Hawai’i n.d.). Reemphasizing Mangauil’s message, the poisoning of our life source is not just an ecological disaster, but a cultural one, as we can no longer trust that relationship to our waiwai. The illegal occupation of Hawaiʻi has led to heartbreak, cultural loss, and death at every turn, but we already knew this. So, it is up to us as the Kanaka of today to carry our kuleana as our ancestors have and to fight for the welfare of our ʻāina. Taking inspiration again from the message Kumu Hina gifted to us, which our first king uttered in the battle of ʻĪao Valley in 1790, it is our time to move forward and to drink of the bitter waters, for there is no turning back. However, as written in our mele kūʻē, we must do this together as one lāhui. All Hawaiʻi stand together, It is now and forever, (Martin 1977)

To the Kanaka who I hope will read this, I aloha you for everything that you are. Whether you live on our islands or not, whether you ‘ōlelo Hawai’i or not, whether you find yourself at every resistance rally, whether you’ve made mistakes that have hurt your own spirit, you are worthy of the love that

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has fed Hawai’i for thousands of years. As our songs will remind us, We are worthy of Hawaiian Sovereignty, and We are in this together, mau a mau. E ola! E ola! E ola nā kini ē! (Martin 1977)

REFERENCES Cerizo, Kehaulani. “State Decision Reached in Na Wai ‘Eha Water Case.” The Maui News, July 1, 2021. https:​//​www​.mauinews​.com​/news​/local​-news​/2021​/07​/state​ -decision​-reached​-in​-na​-wai​-eha​-water​-case​/. Ching, Carreira Donald, Meredith Desha Enos, Brenda L. Kwon, Misty-Lynn Sanico, and Brandy Nālani McDougall. 2021. “ʻĀina Hānau.” In Kīpuka: Finding Refuge in Times of Change, 107–45. Honolulu, HI: Bamboo Ridge Press. Dunford, Bruce. “Hawaii’s ‘Target Island’ Finds Some Peace: Environment: After 20 Years of Protests over Military Bombing Practice, Kahoolawe Finally Has Been Set aside for Cultural, Religious and Educational Uses. Still, There Is a Lot of Cleaning up to Be Done.” Los Angeles Times, January 22, 1995. https:​//​www​.latimes​.com​/ archives​/la​-xpm​-1995​-01​-22​-me​-23120​-story​.html. Groves, Melehina. “Kuʻu Ēwa, Kuʻu Piko.” Kumu Chun’s Website. Weebly. Accessed January 15, 2022. https:​//​kumuchunswebsite​.weebly​.com​/uploads​/1​/3​/2​ /2​/13222998​/iewe​.pdf. “Historical and Cultural Background.” Hui o Nā Wai ʻEhā. Accessed January 16, 2022. https:​//​www​.huionawaieha​.org​/nawaiehainformation. Kamakawiwoʻole, Israel. 1995. Maui Medley. E Ala E, Compact Disc. Keaulumoku. ʻAuʻa ʻIa, cir. 1782. KS Hoʻokahua Cultural Vibrancy Group. “ʻŌiwi Leadership and Aloha ʻāina: Responses to the Overthrow of Lili’uokalani.” Kamehameha Schools, January 20, 2021. https:​//​www​.ksbe​.edu​/article​/oiwi​-leadership​-and​-aloha​-aina​-responses​-to​ -overthrow​-of​-liliuokalani​/. Lam, Kristin. “Why Are Jason Momoa and Other Native Hawaiians Protesting a Telescope on Mauna Kea? What’s at Stake?” USA Today, August 22, 2019. https:​//​ www​.usatoday​.com​/story​/news​/nation​/2019​/08​/21​/mauna​-kea​-tmt​-protests​-hawaii​ -native​-rights​-telescope​/1993037001​/. Martin, Liko. All Hawaiʻi Stand Together. 1977. Mitchell, Harry Kunihi. Mele o Kahoʻolawe. n.d. Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Research Division, Demography. 2017. Native Hawaiian Population Enumerations in Hawaiʻi. Honolulu, HI. “OHA Files Lawsuit against State for Mismanagement of Mauna Kea.” The Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA), January 18, 2018. https:​//​www​.oha​.org​/news​/oha​-files​ -lawsuit​-state​-mismanagement​-mauna​-kea​/. Prendergast, Ellen Kehoʻohiwaokalani Wright. Kaulana Nā Pua, 1893.

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Sai, David Keanu. 2011. Ua Mau Ke Ea = Sovereignty Endures: An Overview of the Political and Legal History of the Hawaiian Islands. Honolulu, Hawaiʻi: Pūʻā Foundation. The U.S. Navy’s Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility Leaked 27,000 Gallons of Fuel from a Single Tank in January 2014.” Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi. Accessed January 16, 2022. https:​//​sierraclubhawaii​.org​/redhill. “Timeline of Kahoʻolawe History.” Protect Kaho’olawe ‘Ohana. http:​//​www​ .protectkahoolaweohana​.org​/history​.html. “Wong, Hinaleimoana. “Kū Ha’aheo e Ku’u Hawai’i.” The Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA), September 3, 2020. https:​//​www​.oha​.org​/ku​-haaheo.

Chapter Three

The World and the West Jasmine Neosh

The first time one sets foot in the Menominee Forest knowing little to nothing about it, the experience is always the same: the expression of visible awe, wide eyes, and a little gasp. The borders of the forest are so stark that if you happen to be looking down for too long, you will completely miss the moment when miles and miles of flat, crisp, golden farm fields give way to a totally different world. Things are green and soft and mossy there. On every side of the highway, enormous white pines and hemlocks and maples loom like skyscrapers. A bird you struggle to identify calls out from somewhere in the canopy and you look, and you look, but you cannot locate it. Rare wildflowers blanket the side of the road as if prepared for a parade. In the summer, beds of gigantic ferns give you the feeling of something prehistoric. Elsewhere in the world, you have not seen a bee all year, but the gorgeous, life-signaling buzz of a whole colony of them alerts you to the presence of an enormous blackberry bush in full bloom. The second reaction is also predictable. It is an assumption. Surely, something so beautiful must be wild, virginal, unfettered by the hubris of modern man. It is a reasonable assumption. To cross that border into the Menominee reservation feels very much like time travel. Things feel simpler, so far removed from the hustle and bustle of town life. This is a world away from the concrete sprawl of nearby cities. That illusion might be dashed ever so slightly when you come back to town and see the modern gas pumps and the illuminated casino sign alerting you to that night’s country cover band, but a turn back off the main drag takes you right into a world before modernity. A non-Indigenous person feels themselves seeing the world their forebears discovered so many years ago–a truly pristine wilderness. This is invariably the point at which I must obliterate a fantasy. The Menominee Forest, much like the rest of the continent “discovered” by early 29

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settlers, is not a wild place untouched by human hands. The complexity and lushness of the land is in fact the direct result of countless generations of loving, knowledgeable care. If you visit during the week, you will notice logging trucks leaving the reservation with piles and piles of lumber. You will see crews of workers with spray paint and heavy machinery. You will hear the plaintive wail of the lumber mill breaking up the day into functional intervals. The reaction to this news is often mixed. Visitors are then curious to see the mill, to hear about how we have managed to maintain such a beautiful home while also dealing with the realities of a historically extractive industry and the pressures of American capitalism. Embedded in that curiosity is almost always a slight tone of disappointment and skepticism. The woodland is—at least for a moment—less mystical, less teeming with adventure and the promise of discovery. Visitors want to know how the trick is done, how exactly they were fooled. To be clear, the mill is actually a fascinating place. Those who go on the tour always come away with an exciting memory. The managers of the Menominee Forest are experts at weaving history with silvicultural techniques and theory. How the Menominee Forest came to look the way it does today is as much about politics, drama, tradition, struggle, and identity as it is about science, and everyone has their connection to that story. Even the hand signals that the mill workers use to overcome the noise have a connection to pre-colonial days, when the barter trails that crisscrossed Turtle Island across Tribal territories made non-verbal communication a necessity for peace and trade. You do not get to leave Menominee Tribal Enterprises unable to see the forest for the trees. But what of the fantasy? Where did that go? Why is the concept of an untouched, unmanaged, unbridled wilderness so appealing in Western civilization? Why is the touch of human hands such a distasteful thing to so many people? And what exactly are we going to do about it? ORIGINS “Western civilization” is a provocative concept for many people. For some, it’s flat-out fighting words. The reason for this reactivity might be rooted in its ubiquity—in the United States, the over-culture is often considered a kind of default. It can be easy for those who did not grow up in a very different culture to forget that the way that things are done and viewed are not behaviors and worldviews inherent to humankind and that our histories are not necessarily shared. This assumption is a critical part of the curriculum in most American schools. Deep thought and consideration of the universe began in ancient Greece. Economics began with Adam Smith, feverishly toiling away

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on the Wealth of Nations while his mother washed his clothes in the other room out of the goodness of her heart. What was the rest of the world doing while Martin Luther was hammering his opinions into the front door of the cathedral, waking up the whole town? Should you even care? Rooted within this cultural ubiquity, however, is an important way of looking at the world. At its heart, Western civilization is a culture of separation: protestants separating from the Catholic Church; the haves and the have-nots; the incrementation of the physical universe into smaller and smaller components through science. On Turtle Island, the separation of youth from families was an important part of American domestic policy. The division of land for individual ownership fundamentally changed the way whole cultures had functioned for thousands of years, leaving many dead in brutal conflicts and massacres arising from a fundamental disagreement about what a person can rightfully claim and kill over. One of the most insidious and impactful separations that Western civilization has produced is the separation of humanity from the rest of the living world. The origins of this separation are muddy. In the Bible, God creates man in the likeness of Himself. Although Man is created second-to-last, all of the majesty of creation is laid at the feet of this being who stands at the back of the existential line. He is told to tend to the garden in which he has suddenly found himself, but it is made clear immediately that in that beautiful paradise, there is a certain pecking order (Gen. 1:26–28 AV). Adam is right up near the top of it. For many years, and across many cultures both Judeo-Christian and not, this is the defined relationship between human beings and the non-human world. It is positional but also relational, a kind of benign hierarchical endosymbiosis. Some saw definite distinctions between humankind and nature but refused to surrender the connectedness altogether. Adam and his kind had power and authority over the Garden, but they also had a responsibility to it. In the sixteenth century, Sir Francis Bacon took a sledgehammer to this idea. To Bacon, the paradise lost by Adam and Eve’s exile from Eden was not the loss of an abundant paradise, but the loss of control. For Bacon, man’s relationship with nature was fundamentally a question of power: “Only let mankind regain their rights over nature, assigned to them by the gift of God, and obtain that power, whose exercise will be governed by right reason and true religion” (Bacon 1620). Man was vulnerable to the power of the natural world and it was time to even the score. Nature needed to be tamed, subdued, conquered. First, however, in order to be tamed, it needed to be held at a distance and viewed through a lens of wary disconnect. Whereas familiarity and prior relationship might have been considered an asset in other ways of approaching the world, under the worldview fostered by Bacon, connectedness is considered an enemy to true knowledge. One needed to approach the world as an emotionless stranger. This is the basis of scientific inquiry. Bacon

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was not shy about making his motivations known. He believed it was the mission of humans to understand nature so that humans could control nature. This conquest was knowledge, and it would lead to the relief of man’s estate. Rene Descartes took this a step further. Not only were humans and nature separate, but many of the basic experiences that were so integral to humankind were experiences that could not be found beyond it. What made a man human (and by extension, worthy of moral consideration) was his mind, and animals did not have a mind (Powel 1970, 209–22). Animals, for example, were machines and as machines, could not experience true pain. This is certainly a convenient thing to believe if you tend to experiment with vivisection, as Descartes did (Bennett 2017). Already, one can see the kernels of oppression in this way of experiencing the world. It is easy to shift your responsibility and consideration of an entity if that entity is not quite as alive as you. If a machine cannot feel pain, you do not have to feel bad about what you do to it. While there is much more to the philosophies of both Bacon and Descartes, it is impossible to deny the influence that these two men hold in laying the groundwork for Western civilization and how fundamental this separation has been to everything that has come after it. The subduing of nature is at the root of most technological advances, from the building of levees to the harnessing of the power of the atom. When this technology creates a new problem, the response is generally just to double down. When the burning of fossil fuels for industry causes the ice caps to melt and the sea level to rise, we can just build sea walls. When the planet cannot handle any more carbon, we simply geoengineer some air conditioning. While science and technology have also yielded positive results following this guideline, such as the treatment of cancer and availability of drinkable water, the separation of the world into humans and not humans has so altered our relationship with the rest of the world that as humans, many of us have fundamentally forgotten who we are in context. We no longer see ourselves as part of an ecosystem even as we decry the alienation of the modern era and invent more and more avenues to feign connectedness. Many of us can readily identify the logos of companies and brands in seconds but struggle to name the non-human relatives with whom we share space aside from one or two common species of tree on our street. In many cases, that context was deliberately beaten out of us in an effort to remake us for assimilation. Adam and Eve have lost their sense of the rules here in Eden and wandered out into a brutal landscape where our purpose in the world is lost, where the beasts are hungry, where our only shelter is the illusion of control.

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HUMANS AS DISEASE In Robin Kimmerer’s groundbreaking book, Braiding Sweetgrass, she describes an incident in which she surveys her students on negative interactions between humans and the environment. Predictably, these students are able to rattle off all the environmental horrors. This is a topic most of us are probably well-versed in, even among those who do not believe the science behind it. Just as predictably, when Dr. Kimmerer asked these same students about the positive interactions between humans and the environment, the students had a lot fewer examples at their fingertips. The median response, Dr. Kimmerer writes, was none (Kimmerer 2013). This is not surprising, although it is quite troubling. There is no shortage of environmental catastrophes at which one could point. When one ventures into the world of environmentalism, it can be difficult to see anything but tragedy. To make matters worse, many if not all, of these tragedies can be traced back in origin to human activities and behaviors. Deforestation and encroachment have obliterated the habitat of many species, endangering the survival of those species. Human movement throughout the globe has opened the door for new species to enter ecosystems which have not adapted to them and slowly but surely, they out-compete the native species and upset the balance of that world. Ocean acidification caused by pollution and climate change slowly chokes the life out of a coral reef, its once dazzling colors subdued to sickly gray. An emaciated polar bear rests forlornly on a tiny drifting bit of ice, its hopes for food long since dwindled down to nothing. Everyone who has had access to media has had these images and more tattooed into their brain. Environmental awareness is not a bad thing. It is, in fact, a very valiant effort to make the general public aware of what, until recently, was known only to a handful of fretful ecologists and systems thinkers. We should be sounding the alarm, arguably even more than we are now. The problem occurs when this information is consumed without a healthy amount of context or precision of language. We hear the phrase “anthropogenic climate change” and that seems very straightforward on its face: it is climate change caused by humans. As a term, however, it does not specify which humans, thereby laying this burden at the feet of all humans. At first glance, this terminology signifies a huge leap forward in the conversation. Climate change is not simply a thing that occurs, the result of mysterious if natural forces. The killer has a name and a face, and that name and face are our own. But what are we to do with that information? What sort of conclusions might we reach? For some, the conclusion comes from a movie: The Matrix. In it, a member of a machine race takes to monologuing its assessment of the human race:

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Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with its surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed, and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague. And we are the cure. (Wachowski 1999)

Before this movie came out, there was a similar sentiment expressed by William S. Burroughs, who posited that language and, by extension, human consciousness, were a kind of virus (Burroughs 1982). In 1995, Dr. Warren M. Hern of the University of Colorado-Boulder compared the human race to cancer, citing our rapid growth, invasion and destruction of surrounding tissue (in this case, ecosystems), metastasis, and our loss of distinctiveness in individual components. Dr. Hern focused primarily on issues of population growth coupled with environmental destruction and included a couple of clever images that paralleled malignant lesions with images of places like Baltimore and North Carolina (Hern 1994, 1089–124). He concluded that human beings would continue to behave as a cancer on the planet even if its overall population growth were to stop, though he offered culture as a potential remedy for reversing the process of destruction. Others have followed this line of thought throughout the environmental movement, including scientist James Lovelock and Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson, as well as pop culture icons like George Carlin, who likened humanity to a bad case of fleas. In the Twittersphere, these sentiments have been stripped down to a single catchy slogan; “Humanity is the virus.” This often appears as a caption or hashtag on images of environmental destruction, such as clear-cut forests and dead baby orangutans. As COVID-19 (an actual virus) began ripping its way through whole population centers, overwhelming hospitals and leaving mass graves and mobile morgues in its wake, this catchphrase came with a grim new conclusion; “Humanity is the virus. COVID-19 is the cure.” When paired with images of the San Francisco Bay area before and after COVID-19 brought the world to a temporary halt, the gray pall of smog feels like an indictment. The ideology here might contain some nuance, but it is easy enough to summarize: human beings, as a species, are to blame for the Earth’s destruction. The Earth is good, therefore, if we want it to heal, the best possible solution is for there to be fewer, if any, humans. This is not a new idea. The reduction of the overall population of humans as a panacea for environmental degradation has been a recurring theme in environmental advocacy for a long time, usually taking the shape of overpopulation. These criticisms often focus on growing population centers like India, whose rapid industrialization in recent decades also contributes heavily

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to fossil fuel emissions (Ehrlich 1968). While rooted in valid concerns about the carrying capacity of the Earth, overpopulation theory as the root of environmental degradation is a harmful oversimplification of the problem. Rather than address the vital issue of resource consumption and environmental exploitation as a companion to wealth, it chooses to make an enemy of those who had little to no say in the structure of the global economy until recently, and late to the game, are simply trying now to survive within it (Roper 2021). What these pop culture-worthy assessments of the environment are missing is this: the human species is not a monolith. The young tribesman of the Amazon is not equally to blame for our current predicaments as the British oil tycoon and does not deserve to shoulder the consequences equally. Could one step into the Menominee Forest, whose role in providing fresh air for millions of people overshadows other forests in the region and which provides much-needed habitat for countless rare species, even as the logging of it remains a vital component of the Menominee Nation’s economy, and reasonably conclude that the people who live and depend upon the forest are an equal contributor to the destruction of the planet (Vaisvailas 2020)? It is a cruel irony that despite several hundred years of compartmentalizing all manner of activities and things and beings into individual components, a dominant cultural conversation that could determine our very existence is suddenly blind to our meaningful distinctions. Painting destruction as a habit inherent to human nature willfully ignores the difference in consumption per capita between wealthy populations and poor ones. As an argument, it ignores wildly disparate differences in the health and biodiversity of land controlled by Indigenous populations versus non-Indigenous populations (Raygorodetsky 2021). It makes a moral condemnation of an entire species based on one very specific pattern of behaviors pushed by a certain percentage of that species without even bothering to consider the variations. Most importantly, it ignores the actual root of the problem. None of these arguments function without the separation of humans from the non-human world. It is easy to think of humans as a parasite and nature as an animal when you see them as separate—it is harder to do when you see them as a single, extremely complex system. At the same time, neither do the behaviors that have led to the destruction of whole ecosystems make sense unless you operate from a worldview that you have an inherent right to do whatever is necessary to further the means of mankind (or as is more often the case, a single human or small group of humans). What sense would it make to allow the pollution of whole aquifers if you did not believe that your own industrial needs supersede the needs of all others who depend on that aquifer, or even the aquifer itself? Whether the assessment of the human species is that we are the masters of all the world and can do with it as we please, or that we are a vile, morally bankrupt species that knows only consumption

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and destruction, both ideologies stem from the underlying assumption that humankind is separate from the rest of the non-human world and an inability to see our fate (and perhaps our salvation) as intrinsically intertwined. WILDERNESS IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER So, what does one do when the burden of being human becomes too much? Imagine it: the cacophony of cars and angry pedestrians yelling at each other from every angle of a busy metropolitan street. Every breeze knocks a bit of debris from the sidewalk into your eyes and every day you come back to your home after being out in the city feeling just a little bit dusty. While some poets have immortalized the brutish grit of city living, there is still something about it that wears away at your soul. You pass homeless people in the street and the sight of them makes you feel a confusing mix of grief, superiority, and shame. Every few blocks, you pass a subway station and find yourself with nostrils full of the wet, vague bodily odor of transit. How can a person find their peace amidst all of this chaos, this industry, this humanity, this noise? The answer for many is a romantic one: get back to the land, go back to nature. Go full Walden. If the nature of man under Western civilization is rooted in the duality of ghost and machine, the broader organization of its society is divided into civilization and wilderness. Henry David Thoreau famously wrote, “We need the tonic of wildness. . . . At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because it is unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature” (Thoreau, Brown 1996). This is the perfect description of one of Western civilization’s deepest-rooted and most confounding fantasies. It is baked directly into every major period of American history, including its inception. When one imagines the North American continent according to the pervasive colonial-centered narrative, what they often see is an unspoiled, untouched, pristine place. Indians lurk in the shadows and the trees, perhaps, but their presence is rare, tucked into a pocket of the much more appealing emptiness. The whole continent has the same inviting quality as the open road, a world of endless possibilities and blank pages upon which the story of Manifest Destiny begs to be written. As civilization slowly begins to impose itself on that land, the pursuit of wilderness becomes a relentless quest for the frontier. The first wave of explorers ventures out into the land, finding it a place of untold abundance. Fruit trees and nut trees line every path. Magnificent stags and fearsome grizzlies make their kingdom here and the rivers teem with fish. The journals of these explorers are full of palpable awe. Slowly but surely, however, the West begins to creep in. Railroads crisscross

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the continent. Piles of dead buffalo block out the sky. As time goes on, the land is colonized from coast to coast. With precious little mystery left in this land, the eyes of the would-be explorer turn to the sky. The Wilderness Act of 1964 defines wilderness in this way: “A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” The Act goes on to list some criteria to help guide federal policy, one of which is that it is undeveloped land which, “Generally appears to have been affected primarily by the forces of nature, with the imprint of man’s work substantially unnoticeable” (The Wilderness Act 1964). This lines up very well with the origin story of America—a beautiful but mostly empty landscape where man might venture but (until that landscape is sufficiently conquered) cannot stay. The nature of wilderness as an ideal is both alluring and elusive—a place to be longed for, searched for, but by its very definition, cannot be fully possessed. On a spiritual and philosophical level, wilderness is interwoven with the concept of discovery—not just discovery of new lands, new minerals, and new wealth, but also the discovery of self. Wilderness is the proving ground for the archetypal adventurer to make something of oneself in the face of overwhelming odds and unspeakable power. Within this discovery is a desire for escapism, a flight from modernity no matter the time period. In 1901, John Muir wrote, “Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity,” but that sentiment could be just as true for a rowdy youth of London lusting for distant shores in the 1400s or a stockbroker dreaming of vacation with his family in the twenty-first century (Muir 1901). The problem with the settler fantasy of the wilderness is that it is based on a complete fabrication. At the time of first contact with European civilizations, the population of the North and South American continents was estimated by some to be as high as 100 million people (Mann, 2018). Every one of those hundred million estimated inhabitants came from a long line of ancestors, many of whom had resided in their ancestral territory for thousands of years. Although every culture in these lands was unique, elaborate trade systems had developed that spanned the continents, bringing food, stories, and materials from faraway lands in the hands of knowledgeable travelers (Dunbar-Ortiz 2015). The abundance that non-Indigenous explorers had “discovered” was not evidence of a benevolent Christian god paving the way for a shining city on the hill, but thousands of years of careful, loving, sensible management at the hands of people who knew the land best. Enormous stags that sparked the imagination wandered through grasslands which had not been overtaken by ecological succession. These habitats did not exist by pure dumb luck—some

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of that grazing land had been burned repeatedly, creating space for these beautiful and helpful creatures to roam and thrive. The myth of the pristine wilderness, as it is often called, is the erasure of thousands of years of Indigenous inhabitance, land management, and deliberate, knowledgeable co-existence. While not quite the benevolent Eden imagined by other myths around the noble savage, the land and the existence of the Indigenous Turtle Islander are so intertwined that their removal through genocide from the landscape resulted in a measurable cooling in the temperature of the planet (Milman 2019). There are telltale signs of human hands everywhere for those who know what to look for: a lone Black Walnut tree in an area where such a tree is incredibly uncommon, on land that at one time looked to have been a homestead; peculiar-shaped divots in the ground that once contained food, stored for winter travelers along the trails; ground that rolls in even, perfectly measured intervals on a particular slope of some hillside. In the absence of their caretakers, ecological succession transforms these places into just anomalous little patches of forest. In some cases, the work is so in tune with the ebb and flow of the ecosystem and its seasons that the hand of the caretaker is all but invisible. In others, removing Indigenous human traditions from the seasons as landscapes experience them can have devastating consequences; the fire-adapted American west feels the consequences of policy that prevented Indigenous caretakers from applying thousands of years of fire teachings, leaving acres of fuels to supercharge wildfires, causing massive devastation to humans and non-human relatives alike (Sommer 2020). Where the man of Western civilization attempted to beat the landscape into submission to fit his needs and desires, Indigenous planning and design builds upon the specific knowledge that is place-based, based on long, close relationships, taking as its goal symbiosis rather than domination (Natcher, Walker, and Jojola 2013). Humans in this context are not only stewards of the land but are actually a part of the seasonal lifecycle of the land around them as much as the migration of birds or the phenology of the plants. Outside of what geology sculpts, it would be difficult to say with absolute certainty that many of the places in the North and South American continents that seem wild are actually, by definition, wild. Instead, many areas are the product of elaborate, generations-long collaborations between the weather, the rhythms of the planet, and the humans and non-human animal relatives who called these places home. It is important to remember, too, that the entire notion of “returning to the land” is an erroneous one. Unless you’re getting onto a ship of some kind and setting out onto the ocean or into space, you cannot return to or depart from the land. The land of Yellowstone National Park is not any more land than the land under your feet when you step out onto your front lawn. Urban humans have as much of a relationship with the land around them as those living in

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rural areas—the difference is that the relationship may just not be a healthy one if one side of that relationship is buried under inches of concrete and asphalt. The builders of skyscrapers had a relationship with the land while figuring out how to make huge steel buildings that could sit still in the sandy unstable earth of Chicago—it was just an adversarial one. What would it look like if urban architects could build with the geography of their home rather than against it? How much could be saved in flood clean-up costs if rather than simply paving over wetlands for parking lots and urban development, city planners bothered to understand the function of those wetlands and the need for water to simply go somewhere? What if we did not pathologically feel the need to obliterate every environment that we touch down to a blank canvas in order to make a place habitable for humans? What if we actually preserved place within the built environment, rather than city after city of columnar steel skyscrapers and sprawling heat sink concrete jungles? Some may say that the fantasy of the wilderness is a harmless one. On the surface, it seems to stimulate curiosity about the natural world, which in some iterations also drives the desire to protect it. Even if we push to the side any concerns about Indigenous erasure in order to preserve this colonial myth— which we should not—the myth of the wilderness is at its heart an affirmation of the same dynamics mentioned throughout this chapter: namely, that humans and nature are mutually exclusive entities; that the essential nature of human beings is to develop, and in doing so, destroy every environment we inhabit; that the only way to preserve the unique beauty and mystery of the land around us is for human beings to be absent from it. This worldview refuses to acknowledge the capacity of human beings to live not just respectfully with the environment, but in a way that contributes positively to it. By limiting ourselves to a culture of separation, by refusing to see ourselves as part of the grandeur of the landscape, we erase a fundamental part of who we are and the ecological niche that we occupy, depriving us of a very important kind of meaning. This knowledge is not important only for the sake of philosophy or for general human self-esteem. It contains within it some possible solutions to the existential crises that loom above not only human beings, but many of the other non-human relatives with whom we share a home. The first step is admitting that a mistake was made. The second is not repeating it. SO, WHAT NOW? All of this comes back—as everything does, for me—to the Menominee forest. Like so many other places that have been deeply loved over the years, the Menominee forest contains generations and generations of stories, of teachings, of wisdom. If you allow it to, it will teach you a lot about what it

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means to be human. It will show you the many mighty animals that confidently prowl its depths: the mighty Black bear, the regal wolf, the curious, exploring garter snake. When confronted with these non-human relatives, it will be impossible not to notice the differences and similarities. Both you and the wolf get hungry, for example. Both you and the bear would do anything you needed to in order to protect your offspring. Unlike the bear, you do not have big sharp claws, huge feet, or powerful jaws. You are not as fast as the wolf. You even have a harder time finding a safe space to hide and blend in than the garter snake, who can disappear from view with unnervingly fast speed. They will remind you, in a way that will run down to your bones, that you are not a strong creature. Between you and a bear, it would be hard to convince anyone that you are the master of this place. But if you stay, and you push through that deep ego-centered insecurity about being in control of everything around you, it will also teach you how to be gentle. It will teach you how to observe, how to tread carefully where you walk. It will show you your capacity for delight and surprise. On a longer timescale, it can also teach you how to take care of something. It can teach you the value of work, independent of capitalist concepts of success and consumption. It can teach you how to listen. It can teach you what reciprocity looks like—the wealth and abundance of a place that is well cared for. It will show you what sustainability really is. It will show you how to live without destroying yourself and everything you touch. On an even longer scale than that, it will teach you about existence, how things can be both temporary and forever. It will teach you how your time on this planet, like all things, is fleeting, and yet how, even in the absence of dogma, there is life after. These teachings are given freely but do require a bit of work and unpacking. Wisdom comes with responsibility. When you know that an animal in front of you is not a machine but a living thing perfectly capable of experiencing pain and sorrow, your understanding creates a responsibility not to be cruel. When you know that a place is special, generous, and deserving of love, that familiarity creates a responsibility to protect it. When you know that this planet provides for you and for your loved ones everything that you need to live and breathe, you have a responsibility to do right by it. It is in these responsibilities that we discover our true place in the world: Adam tending to the Garden of Eden, my ancestors lovingly selecting seeds to ensure that the lineage of the plant that has nourished our family is able to go on and on in its strongest form. We can find that we are not relegated to understanding the world around us through a lens of distrust, fear, and disconnect but rather from a place in our hearts that knows awe, respect, and accountability. The sum of all of these teachings is a relationship, not in the legal or common sense of the word, but in a deeper one. When you live with land long enough, it becomes all but impossible to avoid letting it into your spirit and

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becoming a critical part of your identity. When the Land Back movement began, some (many non-Native) people made the mistake of seeing this as a metaphorical statement. But the land is not a metaphor. Everything in your body has come from everything around you: the iron enriching your blood, the calcium of your bones, the water in your tears. When the time comes and our bodies are returned, we become a part of that cycle. The nutrients of our bodies nourish the soil and in a long enough time frame, we become the forest. In that sense, we are the metaphor. There is no ghost. There is no machine. There is only an iterative and never-ending shifting of custody, a grand existential system of reciprocity and return. The earth gives to your body, you give your body back to the earth. This seems like a separation, but in actuality, it is the same as how water can be a solid, liquid, and a gas at different states—all you are doing is changing form. We are land temporarily in the shape of a human. The problem, for most people, is that this is a relationship that must come about earnestly. It is not a thing that can be bought or packaged and sold off like an all-inclusive vacation. Many people have tried. The road toward repairing it is one fraught with difficult realizations, the tear-down of many an ideological monolith, and the reckoning of painful histories. For Indigenous people, this can mean searching for the ways in which we have been stolen from ourselves. It requires the ability to critically examine the blockades built up inside us by modern comforts and colonial internalization. It means thinking about the things that we and our ancestors have done to survive and what that means for us in the present and for our future generations, as well. It requires us to think of ourselves, not just as ourselves, but as future ancestors, prayed-for descendants, the link between a proud, resilient past and a blossoming Indigenous future. This is the essence of decolonization and the beginning of re-indigenization. For the many non-Indigenous people who know that something is wrong, the path is separate and distinct, though they run side-by-side. It requires a great deal of soul-searching, both individually and culturally. It requires the return of land that has been stolen, occupied, and exploited. It requires justice from a place of restoration—restoration not just of the land but of the people with whom the land has grown. It requires work. It requires the willingness to have difficult conversations and the commitment to action, not just among choirs of the like-minded, but in the places where pushback is unwelcome but necessary. It requires the willingness to repair the relationships that have been hindered throughout the centuries by brutality and carelessness, both with human relatives and non-human, borne on the back of this odious separation. But on the other side of all of this is the beginning of healing, for both the planet and for ourselves.

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REFERENCES Bacon, Sir. Francis. 1620. Novum Organum. New York, NY: P. F. Collier. Burroughs, William S. 1982. “Politics Here Is Death.” In Cities of the Red Night. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Descartes, Rene. 2017. “To Plempius, 15.Ii.1638.” In Selected Correspondence of Renes Descartes (1619–1650). www​.earlymoderntexts​.com Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne. 2015. “Follow the Corn.” In An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Ehrlich, P. 1968. “The Problem.” In Population Bomb. Jackson Heights, NY: Rivercity Press. Hern, Warren M. 1993. “Has the Human Species Become a Cancer on the Planet?: A Theoretical View of Population Growth as a Sign of Pathology.” Current World Leaders 36 (6): 1089–124. Kimmerer, Robin Wall. 2013. “Skywoman Falling.” In Braiding Sweetgrass. Milkweed Editions. Mann, Charles C. “1491.” The Atlantic. October 9, 2018, https:​//​www​.theatlantic​.com​ /magazine​/archive​/2002​/03​/1491​/302445​/. Milman, Oliver. “European Colonization of Americas Killed so Many it Cooled Earth’s Climate.” The Guardian, January 31, 2019, https:​//​www​.theguardian​ .com​/environment​/2019​/jan​/31​/european​-colonization​-of​-americas​-helped​-cause​ -climate​-change. Muir, John. 1901. Our National Parks. Boston, MA: Houghton, Mifflin and Co. Natcher, David C., Ryan Walker, and Theodore S. Jojola. 2013. Reclaiming Indigenous Planning. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Powell, Betty. 1970. “Descartes’ Machines.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 71. Methuen & Co. Ltd: 209–22. Raygorodetsky, Gleb. “Indigenous Peoples Defend Earth’s Biodiversity-but They’re in Danger.” National Geographic. November 16, 2018, https:​//​www​ .nationalgeographic​.com​/environment​/article​/can​-indigenous​-land​-stewardship​ -protect​-biodiversityRoper, Willem. 2021. “Wealthy Nations Lead per-Capita Emissions.” Statista Infographics. March 1, 2021, https:​//​www​.statista​.com​/chart​/24306​/carbon​ -emissions​-per​-capita​-by​-country​/. Sommer, Lauren. “To Manage Wildfire, California Looks to What Tribes Have Known All Along.” NPR, August 24, 2020. https:​//​www​.npr​.org​/2020​/08​/24​/899422710​/to​ -manage​-wildfire​-california​-looks​-to​-what​-tribes​-have​-known​-all​-along. The Wilderness Act. 1964. § Public Law 88–577(16 U.S.C. 1131–1136). Thoreau, Henry David, and Brian Brown. “Spring.” In Walden; and on the Duty of Civil Disobedience, 2nd ed. Norton Critical Editions. Vaisvailas, Frank. “‘Our Spiritual Home’: Wisconsin’s Pristine Menominee Forest a Model for Sustainable Living, Logging.” Green Bay Press-Gazette, October 8, 2020, https:​//​www​.greenbaypressgazette​.com​/in​-depth​/news​/2020​/10​/08​/wisconsin​ -menominee​-forest​-teaches​-foresters​-how​-sustain​-woodlands​/5621244002​/.

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Wachowski, Lilly, Lana Wachowski, Joel Silver, Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving, et al. 1999. The Matrix. Burbank, CA: Warner Bros. Pictures.

Chapter Four

Reflecting on Environmental Narratives In Order to Address the Legacy of Settler Colonial Structures Painted on the Rocks is the Story of My Beginning Pah-Tu Pitt

Diversifying narratives within the environmental sector is important for healing communities, addressing harm, and creating sustainable futures. Physical, institutional, and cultural barriers stemming from settler colonialism impact relationships to place and communities by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, otherwise referred to as (BIPOC). Climate change is another force, not caused by Indigenous people, that can harm traditional cultures, harm connections to the environment, and perpetuate genocide (Fischer et al. 2021). Settler colonialism has varying definitions with implications for placemaking. According to Tuck and Yang (2012), “Settler colonialism is different from other forms of colonialism in that settlers come with the intention of making a new home on the land, a homemaking that insists on settler sovereignty over all things in their new domain.” Initially settler colonialism had notions about civilized versus savage, quickly becoming racialized with white supremacy dominating interactions and governance, especially within the United States. Characterizing lands as wild, or wilderness, with the underpinnings of religious beliefs defining humanity persist. Continual bias is held through seeing humans as separate from nature from the enlightenment period rooted in religious beliefs and ignoring Native contributions; therefore, Native knowledge and societies were less than human and a part of nature, rendering our 45

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connections invisible. Implications are described by Tuck and Yang as (2012) “all things Native become recast as ‘natural resources,’ characterized for consumption and use to the benefit of colonizers in terms of ownership and war.” The unsustainable relationships sharing power and relationships to lands led to invading the U.S. and continuing as if there will always be new frontiers, while not acknowledging that this vision does not take care of everyone. Mainstream environmental narratives reflect settler colonial frameworks where there is a white savior, value placed on exploration, and credit to western science for advancement and modernity. “Settler nativism” is a move to innocence often maintained within environmental narratives. The concept of conservation removed Native people and others across race, class lines, and across other intersectional identities. The term wilderness falsely attributes the condition of pristine nature without human relationships and again situates relationships in terms of western benefit and management to the exclusion of local and BIPOC. Additional removal tactics ranged from killing, to enslavement, to various forms of violence, and more. Western management assumed domination over lands and waters, naming places after people that perpetuated the violence, who set the tone for what is considered recreation. White settlers, also regarded as invaders, were afforded land rights where BIPOC folks were excluded, using citizenship status and racism, which have complex legacies (Fenelon, Trafezer 2014, 3–29). With the move to innocence, relationships are characterized as “saving a place” or having solutions, without noting that the same inequitable systems that created the problem are not ceding power or support to BIPOC communities or Native nations that could be leading. Settler colonialism can be described as “a structure not an event,” as much of the past injustices are unaddressed and take on different forms. For example, historically killing, kidnapping, land theft, transitioning ecosystems into domestic use or extractive, boarding school, diseases, abuse, and subsequent harms to our traditional teaching and economies are initial strategies employed. The impacts are abundantly evident as our peoples experience non-living wages, lack of culturally relevant services, are underserved by the school system, are taken from our homes, at higher risk for sex trafficking, experience shorter life spans, bear the impacts of climate and environmental issues, and experience incarceration. My tribes experience all of these to the extreme and it’s hard to sometimes discuss without coming from a damage centered place. Our statistics do not always capture the systemic barriers that many triumph to do good things, such as my language teacher teaching from her car in a parking lot due to lack of internet service. Excluding BIPOC folks from spaces is seen in various fields that are not diversified, and there is often an absence of analysis for how it came to be that way as mentioned. For instance, Fisheries Sciences are among the least

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diverse fields including race and gender, associated with ecosystem destruction, ideas that fish could be farmed, and anti-Indigenous bias (Arismendi and Penaluna 2016, 584–91). The Green 2.0 report is always remarking on BIPOC opportunities, and it’s also about the culture that folks are being recruited when we are part of that desegregation. This lack of awareness is an extension of the settler move to innocence and often there is a need for research that centers BIPOC and local community knowledge, rather than unanalyzed positionality. As a Native person, experiencing historical and current trauma via the legacy of boarding school, I notice how often a white woman researcher is unaware of her parallel to our experiences with religious community and nuns. Through abuse, withholding resources, and isolating youth, we were taught to take care of white women’s feelings, which is reinforced by pop culture and institutional power structures. Researchers, or any entities not consciously working with Native communities from a cultural humility perspective, often ask us to volunteer and not be an active agent in whatever the outcomes are. The banner is often with good intentions in mind, yet the outcomes may be replicating trauma where the justice lens misses, or the effort may be not culturally appropriate. The practice of erasing the presence and contributions of Indigenous folks is multi-faceted, including repackaging Indigenous knowledge under the umbrella of western culture, such as pumpkins’ association with the Thanksgiving holiday. Western Science is often dismissive or appropriative with much of foundational western knowledge coming from violent practice of invasion and, in the instance of the United States, occupation followed by statehood. A bias that frequently shows up in my work is only seeing Native people as something of the past. At the same time, people often expect Native people to be unharmed by the past and are considered “less than” as part of racism, including not meeting the expectations of who the Natives of the past are. As a Native person carrying traditional teachings and a professional academic background, it is a challenge to carve out space for myself or others as perpetuating invisibility and normalizing harm is habitual at an individual and systemic level. With institutions within the U.S. settler states designed to extract, advocacy efforts within that system are often challenging. Within my circles, my peers often discuss, advocate, or mourn the fact that the “I” and “B” in BIPOC are often missing from representation and power sharing, even in social justice centered spaces. The umbrella of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion often functions as a check box that rarely encompasses shifting the impacts of settler colonialism. Blanchard and Montgomery describe the process as bringing Native folks in a process of exclusion where Native folks still do not have the power over issues that impact them and favors “colonial structures of knowledge.” Similarly, it seems the ideologies that normalized harm and

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violence against the Black community are also perpetuated in environmental spaces and elsewhere. Therefore, there is a lot of overlap and similarities in outcomes and advocacy efforts within our communities, despite different, sometimes intertwined, histories. While stark examples are a part of the lived histories of Native people, some of the most traumatizing include breaking intergenerational relationships. An example of seeing people as “less than human” for scientific study, and connection to European Christianity is described by Fischer et al. in 1804 when British colonialists killed a large group of Indigenous people of all age groups and genders in Tasmania, shipping many deceased off in barrels to Australia for study (Fischer et al. 2021). Simultaneously, the colonists took and converted a child to Christianity, a pattern of violence impacting traditional societies and their relationships to their territories (Fischer et al. 2021). External colonialism frames interactions as frontiers, where people and the environment are appropriated and subjugated for the benefit of the colonizers. Our artwork is seen as the same way with an emphasis on old arts, that reinforce the practice of collecting from vanishing societies, rather than embracing our earning power, talent, and freedom of expression. Reclaiming traditional roles in the modern context requires support, understanding, and uplifting the stories of ancestors through action. In the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere, tribes lead in many conservation efforts, even though conservation is rooted in eugenics and upper middle-class perspectives. While the uniqueness and strength of Native Nations could be described in the context of geology, climate, and a culture of taking care, there is an understanding that linguistically diverse places also have a relationship to biodiversity (Fischer et al. 2021). Our traditional stories, science, and arts all play a role in interactions with our environments and other relationships. Our stories are told on the rocks with one of my favorites, the female chief “She Who Watches,” who sounds like a great leader, a doula, and states person to me. Systems of oppression impact certain folks within our communities more, as does adhering to western idealizations of who is a leader. Feminine and likely more diverse leadership all have places in our societies even as settler colonialism tried to push us into hetero patriarchal binaries. Removing the lessons of worthiness, shame, and judging from boarding school, reiterated by the disregard of our lives is an important aspect of intergenerational healing. Many tribes are minimally served within the education system, with occasions of low high school completion, high suspensions, and major representation in the prison industrial complex. While intergenerational trauma from previous boarding school experiences still ripple, the current system may continue exasperating education as a tool of assimilation and violence. While not exactly the same thing, BIPOC communities within urban areas

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are also often not served well within education and find themselves at the forefront of settler-colonial displacement. The desire for BIPOC knowledge at the forefront of environmental justice often includes not sharing power in spaces that impact BIPOC communities (Montgomery and Blanchard 2021). Non-inclusive sectors largely drive the trend, such as the tech industry or green economy. Contending with stereotypes and heteropatriarchy all influence who is seen as an expert and the types of relationships that folks feel appropriate. At the same time, many institutions are western or disrupted by settler colonialism, therefore western ideas of leadership or maintaining power differentials are maintained. In recent memory, Kamiakin of the Yakama Nation was characterized as responsible for war, when Kamiakin was not even present at some of the conflict with the settlers. What was not said in newspapers was that Native people were responding to trespassing into Treaty areas, and raped family members (Miles 2008, 159–72). This kind of violence was not common prior to invasion. In addition to staying connected to seasonal rounds, Kamiakin was also a prolific farmer (Miles 2008), which does not show up enough in the history of who farmers were. Similarly, the first cowboys in Oregon were Natives, although some folks prefer to be called horse riders. Oral tradition situates traditional cultures in a specific place or in connection to specific places. Knowledge, values, and worldviews are passed down through listening, telling, and practice. Notions of justice often do not include outcomes that are truly upstream of issues faced by Native peoples. Often terms like decolonization are thrown around without actually encompassing Native people; Tuck and Yang (2012) describe, “When metaphor invades decolonization, it kills the very possibility of decolonization; it recenters whiteness, it resettles theory, it extends innocence to the settler, it entertains a settler future.” When our communities are engaged, there may be challenges around cross-cultural communication and extractive relationships. As western and Indigenous world views are rooted in different philosophies, and experience different power differentials, engagement can perpetuate extraction without sharing power or resources. Often western inclinations focus on individualism and property rights. In my experience, conversations and actions around benefitting BIPOC beyond the individual or household unit are rare. Solutions focused on households or disparate communities often do not take into consideration the legacy of long-term harm on Native communities. For instance, dams, associated pollutants, and cancer are a major part of the impact of the power grid and neoliberalism, although it does not seem that advocacy for renewable energy or energy equity include solutions that help to address the possible additional ecological degradation for transitioning and making energy more available. Placemaking is making headway, however,

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it’s still not often that land back to Native communities, especially those local, is a part of a climate or social justice effort. During the pandemic, I got to participate with my family in Bloom, housed at Wanawari, a Black cultural center that includes emphasis on Black liberation and Indigenous sovereignty. It is one of the few times I felt seen in an urban area. There are land back efforts more prevalent throughout the Pacific Northwest in rural areas at a small scale, and some things happening in terms of urban housing. The experiences of intersectional identities are often erased as exemplified by the experiences of missing and murdered Indigenous women, our families, communities, and major contributions to place and knowledge. There is more political momentum to address systemic violence, yet to get to the root, it takes contending with the past in current environmental efforts. Ruminating on lessons learned includes inward facing and outward facing processes, where these works focus mostly on what is in the public domain within the west coast. Free and prior informed consent is a great step in the right direction. It seems a lot is denied to Native peoples and, more broadly, BIPOC and it feels like we need Indigenous futurities. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to disproportionately impact my community, I stand at the front line with my people. While it can be framed as a strategy of harm that Hitler admired, it also can be framed as tribal people that keep leaning into their dynamic cultures and values trying to put their best foot forward while carrying the future. The feelings that I continue to embrace are that our people deserve Indigenous futures and when it does not turn out like that, there is no narrative, politically correct equity, or justice talk that will normalize the violence against BIPOC, LGBTQIA2s+, or our relationships to traditional territories. REFERENCES Arismendi, Ivan, and Brooke E. Penaluna. “Examining Diversity Inequities in Fisheries Science: A Call to Action.” BioScience 66, no. 7 (2016): 584–91. Fenelon, James V., and Clifford E. Trafzer. “From Colonialism to Denial of California Genocide to Misrepresentations: Special Issue on Indigenous Struggles in the Americas.” American Behavioral Scientist 58, no. 1 (January 1, 2014): 3–29. https:​ //​doi​.org​/10​.1177​/0002764213495045. Fischer, Mibu, Kimberley Maxwell, Nuunoq, Halfdan Pedersen, Dean Greeno, Nang Jingwas, Jamie Graham Blair, et al. “Empowering Her Guardians to Nurture Our Ocean’s Future.” Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries, August 27, 2021. https:​//​ doi​.org​/10​.1007​/s11160​-021​-09679​-3. Fletcher, Michael-Shawn, Rebecca Hamilton, Wolfram Dressler, and Lisa Palmer. “Indigenous Knowledge and the Shackles of Wilderness.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118, no. 40 (2021).

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Miles, Jo N. “Kamiakin’s Impact on Early Washington Territory.” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 99, no. 4 (2008): 159–72. Montgomery, Michelle, and Paulette Blanchard. “Testing Justice: New Ways to Address Environmental Inequalities.” The Solutions Journal (blog), March 1, 2021. https:​//​thesolutionsjournal​.com​/2021​/03​/01​/testing​-justice​-new​-ways​-to​ -address​-environmental​-inequalities​/. Tuck, Eve, and K. Wayne Yang. “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1, no. 1 (2012).

Chapter Five

Indigenous Moral Epistemologies and Eco-Critical Race Theory Michelle Montgomery

To hold a constant nurturing environment amid sociopolitical climate justice and environmental health disparities, Indigenous Peoples continue to cultivate strategies for resurgence to empower the ecological consciousness of cultures, experiences, and histories. Many Indigenous Peoples identify and articulate critical questions and approaches that respect and utilize non-settler colonial paradigms to represent a diverse group with unique customs, beliefs, and historical trauma from past oppressive abuses. Through acts of empowerment, Indigenous Peoples have demonstrated how Indigenous Knowledges (IK) are a tool for the sustainability of self-determination and decolonizing settler-colonial narratives of both the meaning and value of Traditional Ecological Knowledge or TEK (Montgomery and Blanchard 2021). Indigenous People have experienced an ongoing tragic legacy of abuse perpetrated, sometimes unwittingly, by biased, dominant Western academic institutions. Educational policies and practices have been developed within a framework of settler-colonial and epistemological forms of racism (Tuck, et al. 2014). The impacts of the United States’ contentious historical relationships with Indigenous People and the forced cultural assimilation served as blatant and symbolic acts of sociocultural genocide by the removal of Indigenous youth to attend residential boarding schools (Child 1998; Reyhner and Eder 2004). From a lens of decolonized pedagogy, Gregory Cajete (1994) explains that within Indigenous epistemologies, land often provides our learning curriculum; it becomes the central reference point for how we relate to the earth, to each other, and to the very act of creation. Likewise, maybe more than anything else, the land is what connects Indigenous Peoples to our ancestors (Kimmerer 2013). As Indigenous Peoples, we are constantly 53

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reminded of the pillars of Indigenous ways of knowing: community collectivism, land and seascape identities, reciprocity, and respect. As a result of a rich cultural connection to the land and seascapes, Indigenous People are the first to experience environmental health disparities as a result of climate change and the people who feel it the deepest given their close relationships with the land and water (Wildcat 2009). These challenges have drastically affected cultural and traditional lived experiences, environmental sovereignty, and human health. This historical backdrop demonstrates the need for more culturally attuned Indigenized critical pedagogy and decolonized academic curricula. It is important to examine how existing Western institutions create the meaning of an equitable education. The associated ethical principle of “to educate,” shows disrespect for land-water based identities and TEK through colonized narratives. The mainstream conception of “to educate” does not fit a cultural lens of land-water based identity and therefore causes harm. While we move forward to decolonize and indigenize culturally relevant partnerships to improve climate justice and environmental health disparity outcomes, a part of the solution is to decolonize and rebuild a more Indigenous inclusive conception that can demonstrate authentic respect and recognition. The practical purpose is to use the critique for how “to educate” and “who defines for whom” the meanings and values of knowledge to motivate and inform the development of an approach to critical pedagogy through the lens of TEK perspectives to further empower the self-determination sustainability. Eco Critical Race Theory (EcoCRT) is my main lens of critique for views of justice. In Critical Race Theory (CRT), race is seen as a social construction, but it is also understood to have very real effects that are cultural, psychological, and material (Cornell 1995; Delgado and Stefanic 2001; Montgomery 2017). However, EcoCRT exposes how oppressive narratives script the dominant culture’s views of knowledge and institutional practices through six basic tenets: 1.  Recognizes that environmental racism is endemic in Indigenous Peoples lived experiences. 2.  Expresses skepticism toward dominant legal claims of a postracial  society. 3.  Challenges anthropocentric ecological ahistoricism and insists on a decolonized historical analysis. 4.  Insists on recognition of self-determination sustainability as living knowledge of Indigenous Peoples and our communities of origin to analyze (settler-colonial) laws and policies. 5.  Acknowledges Indigenous knowledges are interdisciplinary with a collective responsibility.

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6.  Works toward the end of eliminating racial and environmental oppression of Indigenous Peoples’ land and seascape identities as a part of the broader goal of ending all forms of oppression (Cornell 1995; Delagao and Stefannic 2001; Montgomery and Blanchard 2021). Acknowledging Indigenous Peoples’ land and seascape identities must be a part of the broader goal of ending all forms of oppression. To understand the multiple layers of oppressive narratives, we must systematically examine the social and historical power dynamics of institutional culture to probe the colonized complexities of the social construction of identity and knowledge, environmental sovereignty, political power, and racial ideology. COLONIZED NARRATIVES—RECLAIMING TEK To “colonize” is to settle a country with colonists. The colonists see their culture as a superior culture. In an attempt to control the country’s existing Indigenous People, there is a destruction of cultural values and ways of life. Colonists dismantle culture by imposing their own through the establishment and control of a territory. The colonial situation manufactures colonists, just as it manufactures the colonized. If we are to look at how colonization created the identities of both the colonized and the colonizer, we must recognize that historical situations are created by people, but people are, in turn, created by these situations. The way a person views TEK is dictated by their understandings of the world. The Western paradigm of epistemologies and ideologies depicts knowledge as not “living knowledge.” In contrast, to “decolonize” means to release or free a colony from its dependent status and allow it to become self-governing. These terms are sometimes used in other ways. For example, from a Western colonized lens, in biology, organisms of the same species living closely together are said to form a “colony,” often for protection or defense. An additional example, Waziyatawin and Yellow Bird (2005) assert, Decolonization is the intelligent, calculated, and active resistance to the forces of colonialism that perpetuate the subjugation and/or exploitation of our minds, bodies, and lands, and it is engaged for the ultimate purpose of overturning the colonial structure and realizing Indigenous liberation. . . . It is not about tweaking the existing colonial system to make it more indigenous-friendly or little less oppressive. (2, 4–5)

However, I will be applying these concepts in a somewhat different way. By “decolonizing knowledge,” I mean a cultural approach to reclaiming an

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Indigenous narrative with multiple interpretations that can be used in different communities and cultural settings. I use the term “decolonized knowledge” to recognize the cultural rights of communities in accordance with their identity, history, and culture. This approach is used by Waziyatawin and Yellow Bird, who interpret “colonization” to refer to colonizers’ engagement in the process of colonization because it allows them to maintain and/or expand their social, political, and economic power; and “decolonization” to refer to questioning or challenging the legitimacy of colonization. Challenging colonized hegemony involves understanding colonial history. Knowledge has historically drawn upon frameworks, processes, and practices of colonial, Western worldviews that did not acknowledge cultural differences within communities. TEK should be viewed not as a concept but rather as an ongoing process through lived experience that includes a land-water based identity. According to this interpretation, decolonization underscores the need to remember the past, the present, and the future impact of social injustices. Colonization of knowledge as a concept, rather than living knowledge, Indigenous narratives, or other concepts, occurs when a dominant (Western) ideology supersedes existing cultural values, such as a colonized view of knowledge as an “it” versus “who.” While many Western-trained environmentalists are becoming cognizant of the importance of not imposing their knowledge to improve or validate TEK, too often, the consultative process does not reflect respectful reciprocity or community collectivism. Because “living knowledge” is a process experienced within the community, it is important to analyze how forms of oppression, exploitation, and powerlessness are reflected in settler-colonial TEK narratives that exploit the geospatial, land-water connections of Indigenous People and only benefit Western “status quo” research practices. If “living knowledge” is not acknowledged through cultural epistemologies and paradigms, the oppression of colonized TEK represents Young’s (1990) perspective for “lack of decision . . . exposure to disrespectful treatment because of the status one occupies . . . the social divisions between those who plan and those who execute” (58). These injustices have consequences that undermine empowerment, inclusivity, and respect. For example, an educator who desires to learn from a traditional leader what it means to culturally survive climate change and its impact on group land-water based identity might design a learning environment to include both Indigenous elders and youth to share lived experiences for environmental health solutions that will benefit the community. The methodology of “living knowledge” then reinterprets TEK, the space, and the learning as it is being done. While this scenario is hypothetical, it is an example of a potential critical awareness approach to decolonize acts of defining knowledge. Critical awareness can be used as a tool to acknowledge and respect the environmental consciousness of

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communities and how the social construction of identity and knowledge bears significantly on the learning process of lived experiences. It is not only the individuals but also a community of People. Therefore, it is important how learning is expressed when revisiting the respect for “living knowledge” as a dominant guiding principle while recognizing the importance of the embeddedness of TEK. The misguided role of Western conceptions of TEK has not been thoroughly analyzed in a way that dismantles the oppression of co-opted narratives of Indigenous People. In a non-anthropocentric view of ecological interconnectedness, “living knowledge” is a critical lens to understand how lived experience comes with group identity within a community, which is also the centrality of cultural and traditional values that build knowledge as a “who” and not an “it.” It is important to have decolonized pedagogy for building and authenticating social and institutional change, in particular, to support Indigenous Peoples. The need to develop and respect multiple expressions of knowledge does not happen through dialogue alone. The work of recognition is deep, and merely sharing experiences is not enough. In order to better ensure the construction of critical ecological consciousness for decolonization, Indigenous People must be able to contribute to cultural and traditional expertise to unveil institutional roles in the realities of oppression. The dialogue must include an engagement with educators and institutions to explain how systems of oppression work through and beyond existing local institutions. A non-anthropocentric view of ecological interconnectedness decolonizes how land and seascape identities are in unison with the notions of climate justice, environmental health disparities, and lived experiences (i.e., traditional food sovereignty, cultural, and traditional practices) of Indigenous People. Throughout history, the survival of Indigenous nations has been adaptation, which has sustained community resilience and survival. Therefore, it is imperative to build on Indigenous Peoples’ approaches to environmental consciousness and the moral nature of TEK as “living knowledge.” A SENSE OF PLACE, JUSTICE, AND THE ENVIRONMENT Unjust environmental practices that further discriminate against already marginalized groups, in particular Indigenous People, are a form of genocide. The criteria to determine social justice is about fairness beyond individual justice. It involves finding the optimum balance between our joint responsibilities, as a society and as individuals, to contribute to a just society. A social justice concept that focuses on a joint responsibility to acknowledge Indigenous

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Peoples’ environmental sense of place involves creating equitable institutions, for example, institutional policies and practices that include critical pedagogical approaches for social inclusions of communities (Deloria, Jr., & Wildcat 2001). The idea of social inclusion is that communities connected to institutional spaces of traditional land and seascapes participate in the development of knowledge transition. The role of EcoCRT or other conceptions of justice recognizes these complex relationships and intersections that reside within the knowledges and identities of communities. It is systematically unjust to exclude and marginalize communities by not respecting sovereign inherent rights and cultural values (Young 1990, 55). If we agree that an environmental sense of place needs multiple interpretations suited to specific cultural contexts in which the concept is applied, then the question becomes, how do academic institutions fulfill this responsibility? As some of our cautionary tales show us, it is often the “business as usual” itself that creates harm. From an academic institution lens, Indigenous Peoples are often viewed as research subjects and not multigenerational knowledge holders. The problem is entrenched systematically. Therefore, the moral issue at hand is the need to acknowledge how colonized pedagogy has historically impacted Indigenous Peoples. That is, the perspective must be positioned and understood from a historical context. This contextualization, through frequent recognition, should be forged based on the institution’s policies to acknowledge the lived experiences of Indigenous Peoples. From an interpreted, critical awareness outlook on an environmental sense of place, a settler-colonial notion does not take into account how the concept of a sense of place is essentially linked to land and seascape identities, nor how it is connected to respecting the meanings attached to the quality of Indigenous Peoples. However, those in favor of adding new interpretations of critical pedagogy grounded in an environmental justice lens acknowledge the diverse place-based identities and Indigenous Knowledges of communities. In doing so, a sense of place appeals to the equality of the cultural and traditional self-determining sustainability with nations. It might be objected that an environmental sense of place cannot have preferences or make decisions for the dominant culture. In response, it is important to acknowledge that Indigenous Peoples have preference by application of being the original inhabitants, which is often expressed as an inherent, sovereign right. This moral language dictates the duty to acknowledge customary and traditional practices. However, self-determined sustainability can take many forms. The criteria to determine social justice is about fairness beyond individual justice. It involves finding the optimum balance between our joint responsibilities as a society and as individuals to contribute to a just society. EcoCRT utilized as social justice framework focuses on a joint responsibility that

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acknowledges Indigenous Peoples’ environmental sense of place and involves creating equitable laws and policies; for example, institutional practices that include critical pedagogical approaches for social inclusions of communities. Menzies elaborates by asking, “How can students of Indigenous backgrounds identify with science, or even Indigenous knowledge, when they seldom if ever learn about their own contributions to science knowledge, their beliefs about the world, their history, or other values?” (Menzies 2006, 197). Since Western curricula have a long history of not recognizing and ignoring Indigenous contributions to its studies, many Indigenous students will find their curriculum irrelevant and exclusive in a way they cannot participate (Menzies 2006). However, drawing together a more interdisciplinary approach can provide a productive way for developing a collaborative and inviting educational curriculum. In order to shift a settler-colonial lens, Indigenous knowledges should not be viewed as universal; rather, they should be understood for their interdisciplinary differences. Therefore, Indigenous Knowledge should not, and cannot, simply be evaluated and scrutinized for solutions, but instead be integrated with the holders of such knowledge and historicized to engage with the sociopolitical context of Indigenous Peoples (Blanchard 2015). I use the term “decolonized solutions” to recognize the cultural rights of Indigenous Peoples in accordance with their identity, history, and culture. With decolonization practices being at the core of solutions, this would be a long-term commitment through three common and related aims: (1) examine the equity and inclusion barriers of the social and environmental determinants of health inequalities for adaptation and survival of climate change of Indigenous Peoples as land-water based interconnectedness to identity; (2) increase the inclusion of political and social capital among Indigenous community members; and (3) involve efforts to ensure that people from diverse backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives are included through collaborative partnerships of universities, community agencies, and organizations. For this reason, decolonized solutions have a special role in promoting ecological consciousness and justice, and decreasing health disparities through education and research practices that offer wide-ranging opportunities for Indigenous Peoples to engage with issues relating to their diverse, traditional knowledge and to facilitate courageous conversations about oppression. Change is created through ways that must explore key principles and practices of justice. There are multiple ways to protect the natural world through decolonized solutions. One method is developing critical reflection opportunities to share knowledge—to listen and engage in dialogue. Major criteria of critical reflection for my courses are responding to: So, What? How? When? Why?—with examples of “unpacking” your perspectives. It is important to practice

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engaging people in conversation versus the disengagement of a person’s perspective. We need methods of discourse that recognize plural knowledge that can engage scholars. Decolonized solution approaches also require additional steps that acknowledge and respect the unique sovereign status of Indigenous Peoples and the unique moral and cultural context of their communities. As Deloria Jr., Foehnr, and Scinta assert (1999), “All knowledge, if it is to be useful was directed toward the moral goal” (43–44). The ethical dimensions of community science highlight how Indigenous Knowledges and TEK have an inherent awareness for the respect of all beings. Vine Deloria, Jr., et al. (1999) explain, There is content to every action, behavior or belief. The sum of our life experiences is a reality. There is a direction to the universe, empirically exemplified in the physical growth cycles of childhood, youth and old age, with the corresponding responsibility of every entity to enjoy life, fulfill itself, and increase in wisdom and the spiritual development of personality. Nothing has incidental meanings for or coincidences. In the moral universe all activities, events, and entities are related and consequently it does not matter what kind of existence an entity enjoys, for the responsibility is always there for it to participate in the continuing creation of reality. (46–47)

Indigenous communities engage in practical knowledge systems and utilize ideas of traditional knowledge through reciprocity. This awareness derives from acknowledging a cultural and relational responsibility to place. It is important to find ways of interpreting and synthesizing knowledge so that it is meaningful to the recipient. Relating to others is important yet is difficult to find in academic discourse. We are all related, and this goes beyond the bounds of human interaction. Respect for all things creates proactive ethical work and the recognition of reciprocity. PERSONAL LESSONS OF RECIPROCITY AND ECOLOGICAL CONSCIOUSNESS Reciprocity recognizes a multigenerational responsibility through place-based relationships, identities, and lived experiences. As a child, I idolized my older brother, Henry, and cherished our relationship. When invited to partake in made-up games or outdoor adventures, I always felt such an overwhelming sense of joy. During a late-June summer day, I carefully observed Henry weave between the dangling branches of a Weeping Willow (Salix Babylonica), gently collecting June bugs (Cotinis nitida) in a glass jar with a spool of thread bulging out the back pocket on his shorts. The June bug or

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June beetle is common to North Carolina and other southeastern states. The name reflects the emergence in June and July from its larval form into an adult beetle averaging less than an inch in length. The larvae (white grubs) live in the soil and can be destructive to Virginia bright leaf tobacco (Nicotiana rustica) and burley tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum). Metallic green with a dusky yellow along its side, the June beetles could be seen on the altering, narrow, simple leaves. After he collected what appeared to be quite large June bugs, he sat down on the grass and gestured for me to join him. Within seconds, my dad appeared as if he had some sort of magical powers and inquired, “What are you planning on doing with those June bugs?” My brother explained how he wanted to make June bug kites by fastening a thread from the spool to its leg and following it while flying. My dad replied, “Did you know the June bug is a state bug and protected by the law? Do you plan on breaking the law?” In this moment, I shared a horrified glance with my brother. After my father noticed he had our full attention, attempting not to laugh, he proceeded with his lesson by asking, “Would you want someone to tie a string to your leg and watch you run around the yard? Is this being respectful?” My brother replied, “Why would someone do that? That’s mean . . . no!” And so, my dad finished his lesson by saying, “Exactly! And put those June bugs back where you found them.” As he walked away, he yelled, “The state bug is a damn bumble bee, and don’t ask me how I know. Don’t forget to visit Mr. Richardson; he’s collecting honey today.” Mr. Cleveland Richardson was the local beekeeper. Surrounding our properties were massive amounts of Japanese honeysuckles (Lonicera japonica), white clovers (Trifolin repens), and Sawtooth blackberries (Rubus argutus). The intricate relationship with the European honeybees (Apis mellifera) played an important role in the sweet floral taste of Mr. Richardson’s honey. Honeysuckle, at least the version I knew growing up in North Carolina, is a particular variety called Japanese honeysuckle. It is one of twenty species in North America, but it is not native to our area. Many of my memories include eating honeysuckle flowers and enjoying the sweet-tasting nectar. White clover is not only a favorite of bees but also preferred by butterflies, such as my personal favorites—the Eastern tiger swallowtail butterfly (Papilio glaucus) and common buckeye (Junonia coenia). And, it outcompetes weeds by spreading rapidly while growing harmoniously with grass. The Sawtooth blackberry is a perennial native wild blackberry and can be quite invasive. It is known to compete with pine seedlings or saplings’ natural regeneration of pine tree stands such as loblolly (Pinus taeda) and shortleaf pine (Pinus echinata). My dad’s reminder had multiple reasons, (1) take care of our elders, (2) being around bees teaches respect, and (3) my hardest task, patience. Mr. Richardson taught me that we should always respect bees for providing an

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important medicine, raw honey. It is known to have antioxidant, antifungal, and antibacterial properties. Although a spoon of raw honey has always been my much-loved energizing treat, there is a reason—the love and care it takes for bees to produce honey is passed on. After all, we are what we eat. Through the years, I continue to learn the powerful reality of the reciprocity of respectful relationships. As a forever student on a spiritual journey, I view everything around me as having multiple realities that are not static but fluid. My multiple realities are a relational accountability while knowing my actions should reflect a dutiful and ethical responsibility to the natural world. There is an urgent need to ask ourselves, “As a relative to the natural world, how do you want to be remembered?” IK and TEK are accumulated knowledge based on intimate familiarity with the environment. The reciprocity of ecological consciousness places in the forefront an awareness of lifeways for ecological health. We are aware on a local, national, and global scale that there is an urgency to address ecological health. A part of ecological consciousness is also experiencing environmental impacts. By experiencing, I am not implying that one must partake in an expedition to sail the Northwest passage (which has been described as the Mount Everest of sailing) or traverse the Three Sisters trio peaks near Canmore, Alberta, in Canada. As a relative of the natural world, we should share one commonality, the belief we cannot operate without the other. On a cold and misty day in 2010, I was invited to sail to Poets’ Cove in the Southern Gulf Islands in British Columbia, Canada. The small island oasis is set in the secluded Bedwell Harbor Bay on South Pender Island. I had overwhelming, mixed emotions of grief and anger for how a historically protected village site of the Saanich First Nations was desecrated by being transformed into the Poets’ Cove Resort and Spa. Yet, the call of the sea—the epicenter of life—has the power to call your spirit and heal your soul. As a person trained in both western science and place-based TEK, it became quite apparent that my true collective responsibility is remembering the lessons from years of sleepless nights. As a child, sneaking outside on clear, crisp nights, climbing my favorite tree and listening quietly for the arrival of the white-tail deer (Odocoileus virginianus) and raccoons (Procyon lotor) that would invade our vegetable garden. One morning, my dad mentioned, “If for one second you think that I do not know about you climbing trees at night . . . think again.” As I grew older, a lesson learned was the cultural, authentic intuition of my dad, acknowledging the importance of developing a relationship with the natural world. In his own way, my dad was nurturing ecological consciousness to protect the natural world, our ancestors, and the next generation.

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REFERENCES Blanchard, Paulette. 2015. “Our Squirrels Will Have Elephant Ears: Indigenous Perspectives of Climate Change in the South-Central United States.” (Unpublished master’s thesis, University of Oklahoma). Cajete, Gregory. 1994. Look To The Mountain: An Ecology of Indigenous Education. Skyland, NC: Kivaki Press. Child, Brenda J. 1998. Boarding School Season: American Indian Families 1900– 1940s. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Delgado, Richard and Jean Stefannic. 2001. Critical Race Theory: An Introduction. New York, NY: University Press. Deloria Jr., Vine, Samuel Scinta, Kristen Foehner, and Barbara Deloria. 1999. Spirit and Reason: The Vine Deloria Jr. Reader. Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, Deloria, Vine, and Daniel R. Wildcat. 2001. Power and Place: Indian Education in America. Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing. Kimmerer, Robin Wall. 2013. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions. Menzies, Charles. 2006. Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Natural Resource Management. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Montgomery, Michelle R. 2017. Identity Politics of Difference: The Mixed-Race American Indian Experience. Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado. Montgomery, Michelle R., and Paulette Blanchard. 2021. “Testing Justice: New Ways to Address Environmental Inequalities.” Solutions Journal, https:​//​thesolutionsjournal​ .com​/2021​/03​/01​/testing​-justice​-new​-ways​-to​-address​-environmental​-inequalities​/ Reyhner, Jon Allan, and Jeanne M. Oyawin Eder. 2017. American Indian Education: A History. Second ed. Norman OK: University of Oklahoma Press. Tuck, Eve, Marcia Mckenzie, and Kate Mccoy. 2014 “Land Education: Indigenous, Post-colonial, and Decolonizing Perspectives on Place and Environmental Education Research.” Environmental Education Research 20 (1): 1–23. Waziyatawin and Michael Yellow Bird. 2005. For Indigenous Eyes Only: A Decolonization Handbook. School of American Research Native America Series. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research. West, Cornel. 1995. Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement. Edited by Kimberlé Crenshaw, Neil Gotanda, Gary Peller, and Kendall Thomas. New York, NY: New Press. Wildcat, Daniel R. 2009. Red Alert!: Saving the Planet with Indigenous Knowledge. Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishers Young, Iris Marion. 1990. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Chapter Six

Ripples and Ribbons Indigenizing Apiculture and Pollinator Stewardship Melanie Kirby

Growing up in southern New Mexico in a Mestizo (mixed Indigenous and Hispanic) community, I recall being pulled in multiple directions—one direction, like an internal compass that bestows reverence on these enchanted lands that have fed me, and another of misguided hierarchy, which assumes that progress and wealth are to be earned through competitive self-determination. I came to recognize that many of us exist as a result of conflict between systems. But where this creates friction, there are also points of balance and support that allow us and other organisms to exist. I’ve spent most of my adult life learning how to reconcile the blood memories that course through my veins. The quest to come to terms with my mixed heritage, and as one who has been raised within shared Indigenous World View is one that is characterized by comprehension of the parts of our world as intimately interconnected and explicable only by reference to the whole. The shared Indigenous World View is thus holistic, and relational such that the whole is valued more than its parts. Within the shared Indigenous World View, Indigenous People regard themselves as deeply connected with everything and everyone around them. To understand oneself requires understanding of all that is around and thus, to damage the environment, the land, waters, and air and the community is ultimately, to hurt oneself and everyone (Daniel 2019). Each community, tribe, and family are units within units of a broader societal system. Each patch of air, fire, water, and land interact as units of a broader elemental system. And each vitamin, mineral, plant, and animal 65

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develop relationships as members of evolving biodiverse systems. Between these systems there are actions and reactions—chemical, physical, and emotional—that nurture or destroy. Our perception and interactions determine whether we and our living systems survive or thrive. I have often wondered, are we each the same but just manifest differently due to our environment? How can we as individuals and as members of a society reconcile the oppressive and defensive interactions humanity continues to battle? What is our role, and why are we alive? How do our actions impress or depress others? I have also pondered if it isn’t as simple as bearing witness to the mystery and majesty of life and longevity: the interconnectedness of the land beneath our feet, the sky above our heads, the breeze that blows around us, and the water that quenches our thirst. It took a small, fuzzy, and buzzy winged angel to entice and introduce me to the concept of longevity and its implications. When an organism can live long and full, its genes and cellular memory transcribe and code that potential into its existence. It is a heritable trait and can be passed on from one generation to the next, creating systems of behavior to enable its survival while being dependent upon evolving systems of interaction. Like webs within webs, spiraling in and out, these systems create ripples and ribbons of fluid lattice that exist in relation to each other, all striving for the potential for perpetuity. Many consider honey bees (Apis mellifera) to be an introduced species to Turtle Island. However, fossil evidence dating 14 million years old reveals that North America did indeed have its own native honey bee. Apis nearctica as it is referred to was prevalent on the North American continent. Similarly, horses were also present across North America pre-contact and due to several climatic events, became extinct (Forstén 1991). One such episode was due to the Laurentide Ice Sheet. However, there are long-standing relationships that have been discussed among Indigenous communities as reconnection and oral storytelling share (Collins 2017). For the Native American honey bee (A.m. nearctica) we are still learning what happened to them and whether any have survived. And in the meantime, their cousins have been reintroduced into North America beginning in the 1600’s (Kotthoff et al. 2013). Indigenous Peoples across the globe had had long standing relationships with honey bees. The oldest known cave paintings of honey harvesters were recorded as being found in 1924 in the Cueva de Las Arañas (Cave of the Spiders) in Valencia, Spain (Crane, E. 2005). The image depicts a female honey huntress collecting honeycomb from up in a tree. In Egypt and the Middle East, honey bee stewardship has been recorded for thousands of years (Kritsky 2015). From Africa to Asia, to the reintroduced cousin subspecies found across the Americas, honey bees have fascinated cultures and their stewardship has manifested in many a traditional and spiritual practice that transcends boundaries and beliefs.

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When I first began stewarding bees, my field of vision was drawn to the mysterious behaviors that allow honey bees to make honey. I recognized their dependence on the flora and habitat that provides nutrition. But I took it for granted that their reliance on landscapes was static. Yes, they will always need forage, but who will conserve what Mother Nature and Father Time have sculpted over millennia? Who will preserve existing wild lands and nurture new pastures? Who will reconcile conflicts to encourage points of balance and structural integrity to promote longevity? The Western construct that we’ve become conditioned to emphasizing isn’t founded on principles of long-term engagement and reciprocity. As such, it is imperative that we look to Indigenizing the Ecological Consciousness of humankind and seek to reestablish the animism and personhood on the elements that sustain us, in order to gain a better understanding of relationships, and working in tandem with Nature through biomimicry—which has evolved over millennia to support life and biodiversity over varied and diverse land and seascapes. There are over 20,000 known species of bees, 4,000 of which live across Turtle Island. Within New Mexico’s enchanted landscapes, there are over 1,000 recorded species (Carril n.d.). I have communicated with Indigenous land stewards, community members, scientists, and organizations to generate awareness and support for bees. I have spent 25 years enduring the ups and downs of beekeeping in diverse and adverse landscapes. What I’ve come to recognize is that these beneficial insects (and we humans), along with their surroundings, are like strands on a web that can endure some shock waves, but that could, if stretched to its limits, snap and lose integral strength . . . causing the tension of support to disintegrate the relationships constructing the lattice or matrix of our living world. Learning from bees and landscapes among the northern Pueblos, I’ve become acquainted with the fragility and fierceness that the Río Grande and southern Rockies pose for everyone. This duality matches my own worlds—the one I move through and the one in my mind. It exerts a certain unification—a desire to be one with my surroundings in my undertakings. Prior to the pandemic I was conducting research on bees’ mating behavior and collecting stories of climate and market adaptation from beekeepers, while also immersing myself in the repercussions of Spanish history. While living in Spain, I visited farmers, beekeepers, researchers, and students and witnessed a unique moment in history, when the farmers took to their tractors and blocked all roads into the capital of Madrid. They were demanding to be recognized for their efforts to feed their paisanos (countrymen). They were demanding a living wage and fair pricing. While in Spain, I also witnessed beekeepers who took to the streets to call attention to how pesticides and loss of habitat are impacting pollination. These land stewards go to great lengths to share their olives, wine, cheese,

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ham, honey, almonds, fruit, veggies, and wares with their neighboring countries. Spain is considered the fruit basket of Europe, and the Spaniards share their cornucopia with regions of northern and eastern Europe that have shorter growing seasons. In doing so, they must pass rigorous ecological standards and commitments. I witnessed the evolving relationships among farmers, beekeepers, technicians, distributors, and agencies as they struggled to regenerate their regional food systems. Their struggles are very similar to ours in the United States and in the intermountain Southwest. Spain is a melting pot of Arabic, North African, Visigoth, and Roman descents. They have been colonized and have become colonizers. They have transformed their warring histories into a tapestry much like ours in New Mexico, a mosaic of traditions that exude fervor, flavor, and artistry. Wherever there are humans, there is a need for food production and security. Wherever there are other living organisms, there is a need for maintaining conditions conducive to life and longevity. It is a quest that takes years to develop but one that can endure if nurtured. It is a respect between units, elements, communities, and systems. And in reconciling the historical trauma inflicted by other conquerors and amending their acts of conquering into transmuted integrations of past, to present and to future. This pandemic is forcing us to come to terms with our own and our neighbors’ past transgressions. It is requiring us to acknowledge values of necessity and luxury and to find a balance between them. It is demanding that we reflect on what is important to us for survival and encouraging us to extend empathy. Growing, maintaining, and regenerating regional food systems ultimately depends on this. It depends on us as individuals and as communities to signify our place, declare purpose . . . and coax piety—piety of the elements, of our communities, of our planet, and of the universe. To be pious means to be devout and reverential. It means to believe in a system of units that can sustain each other. It means to embrace and uplift the Indigenizing potential for the benefit of all parts—as their sum is greater than left individually, silo-ed, and unrelated without context. Establishing a bee farm that is all about relationships, that exults the connections between place, power (responsibility), and purpose, has and shall continue to recognize the interconnected symbiosis between community, habitat, and the reciprocal act of feeding each other. This year marks the 18-year anniversary of Zia Queenbees Farm. We are amazed and grateful at the continued support from diverse communities, and we have visions of a declared Indigenized pollinator preserve for our region to better support wild and cultivated food production, from mesas to valleys to canyons to mountains and everything in between. If we can all plant more flowers, preserve our waters, protect our living landscapes and biodiversity, and be mindful of what we bring into our region (plants, insects, and other organisms), we

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will reinforce the matrix of our webs. This will help our pollinators and help manifest our children’s and our ancestors’ dreams for perpetuation of life and longevity. It takes a community to raise bees and a collective effort to Indigenous Ecological Consciousness. REFERENCES Carril, O. BLM New Mexico. https:​//​www​.blm​.gov​/programs​/natural​-resources​/ native​-plant​-communities​/pollinators​/new​-mexico. Daniel, Raychelle. 2019. “Understanding Our Environment Requires an Indigenous Worldview.” Eos (Washington, D.C.) 100. doi:10.1029/2019EO137482. Forstén, Ann. “Mitochondrial-DNA Time-Table and the Evolution of Equus: Comparison of Molecular and Paleontological Evidence.” Annales Zoologici Fennici 28, no. 3/4 (1991): 301–309. http:​//​www​.jstor​.org​/stable​/23735454. Kirby, Melanie. “Ripples & Ribbons.” Green Fire Times: News and Views from the Sustainable Southwest. September/October 2020. https:​//​greenfiretimes​.com​/wp​ -content​/uploads​/2020​/09​/GFT​_SepOct2020​_Web​.pdf. Kotthoff, Ulrich, Torsten Wappler, and Michael S. Engel. “Greater Past Disparity and Diversity Hints at Ancient Migrations of European Honey Bee Lineages into Africa and Asia.” Journal of Biogeography 40, no. 10 (2013): 1832–38. https:​//​ onlinelibrary​.wiley​.com​/doi​/full​/10​.1111​/jbi​.12151. Kritsky, G. 2015. The Tears of Re: Beekeeping in Ancient Egypt. Oxford University Press.

Chapter Seven

Indigenous Feminisms and Environmentalism in Care of Place Paulette Blanchard

I am Absentee Shawnee, of the PeQuaLiWe division, PeLiWe clan, Big Jim Band, and Blanchard family. I am a mother of two and grandmother to one. I have my Shawnee name and participate in our ceremonies. I have not always grown up in my Shawnee community, but I am deeply embedded in our community and have been for many years. Everything about who I am comes from my relationship to my community, extended and immediate family, and where I live. The water, land, trees, birds, plants, and all the things about what makes this space our place also guides my actions and behavior. The cycles of life direct our foods, ceremonies, and so many other rituals. I carry these ways of being with me and look to these social and cultural norms in almost everything I do. It is from places of physical being, social/cultural being, and being interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary I approach learning, research, advocacy, and activism. I unapologetically center my worldview as a mixed-race Shawnee, Two-Spirit, cis gendered, grand/mother, and human. My spirituality and culture guide me in all aspects of the work I do and life I live. I allow my intuition and emotions to influence my questions and analysis. I look to dreams and ceremony to deeply consider whatever aspect of the research process I am doing. I nurture the relationships I have built and grown over my lifetime and throughout academia to answer questions that have come from my own journey in science and academia. It is because of these reciprocal relationships with other Native/Indigenous students and mentors that I am still here, physically and academically. Introductions are the first acts of etiquette and protocols in Shawnee and most Indigenous communities. Indigenous research methodologies, methods, 71

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and communities hold researchers accountable to all of our relations in all of creation (Smith 1999; Wilson 2008). Instead of false claims of “objectivity,” Indigenous research methodologies ask, “how you are going to use your way of thinking (your epistemology) to gain more knowledge about your reality” (Wilson 2001; 2008). An Indigenous research paradigm includes “ontology, epistemology, methodology, and axiology” centering and grounding the researcher in the “fundamental belief that knowledge is relational. Knowledge is shared with all of creation” (Wilson 2001, 175–76). It is from this positionality I reflect on the questions and my responses based on the wealth of literature across multiple disciplines forming my understanding of Indigenous Feminism, and how it applies to place through resistance and/ or refusal of settler colonial systemic and institutional violence of racism, supremacy, heteropatriarchy, gender bias, education, and activism. I will follow up with how these fore mentioned issues are being challenged and refused by Indigenous Peoples by re-claiming places through environmental, social, and academic advocacy and activism in multiple ways. Idle No More was started by four women, three First Nations women and a non-Native ally, as a flash mob round dance movement that started in Canada and went viral with social media inspired groups of Native women organizing teach-ins on academic campuses and in Native and Non-native community centers and churches across North America. Native women organized rallies at provincial and state capitals across Canada and the United States. Indigenous Peoples were becoming visibly loud. After Idle No More slowed down, Native women were still working locally to advocate for water protections and environmental protections, trying to find ways to strengthen the sovereignty of tribes. Then there was a call to all Natives to come help stand in solidarity with the Standing Rock Lakota in Cannonball, South Dakota. That changed the world for many of us that answered the call; it changed me. Standing Rock was a local resistance that got world attention because of the complete and utter social and legal injustice and accompanying violence. I went in early October 2016, the second year of my PhD program. I was excited to be part of something bigger than anything I had ever experienced before. It was an overwhelming experience on so many levels, such as size spatially, population numbers, diversity of tribes represented, and the love, the love in every task, word, and act. I sat in an all women sweat with prayers and songs for four hours. I was full of communal love and grounded in spirituality. Even in a space so grounded in spirit and love, the heavy vibe from militarized hyper-militant law enforcement and goonish inflammatory hired security of the oil company was a constant reminder of the conflict between the opposing worldviews. We continued to pray and sing. I left the Sunday before the violence started against the Water Protectors by law enforcement. So, as I watched in horror, women, children, youth,

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and elders were attacked indiscriminately by law enforcement and private security with the most extreme forms of “non-lethal” force. I was back in my routine of classes and “normality” and watching from the safety of my computer. People I made relationships with being attacked and injured. It was in these moments of conflict I had clarity. What drives Native women to put themselves in spaces of increased violence as environmental activists and water protectors? While the term “spaces of violence” is a debated discussion, for Indigenous Peoples it is much more tangible in that Indigenous Peoples are subjected to settler colonial violence in such a way that violence is normalized. This normalization of violence against Indigenous Peoples becomes more intense and visible in women, girls, and Two-Spirit people to the point that in Canada and the U.S., missing and murdered women cases were not investigated and counted for years, thus normalizing violence and Indigenous women, girls, boys, and Two-Spirits. In an article by Holmes, Hunt, and Piedalue (2014), the discussion of spaces of violence is centered around settler colonial and neo-colonial concepts of land, racial hierarchy, gender, sex, and power. They argue that academic, activist violence, and resistance are not accounted for in dominate discourses of violence and colonialism. More specifically, that as an expected, and therefore normalized, violence, there is no accountability to protect those affected, or repair the system, it expands into how land, gender, and “othered” people are impacted as labeled unworthy of safe spaces. THE LITERATURE Why are Indigenous women, who often are already subjected to poverty, violence, racism, sexism, and settler colonial heteropatriarchy, putting themselves or their families in harm’s way as environmental leaders, advocates, or water protectors? What drives these women to be on the front lines of violence to protect the environment? Do they do it out of responsibility or due to another explanation? Why are women most visible in these spaces? In reviewing Indigenous feminism, it is suggested the methodologies and methods of Indigenous feminism have always existed as part of different Indigenous communities and expressed in different ways in diverse nations (Tickner 2015). Through colonization, many Indigenous communities have lost part, but not all, of the practices and rituals that accompany traditions relating to gendered justices and equity. Influenced by settler colonial patriarchy and Christianity, the roles and customs of gender and sexuality was inflicted upon and reproduced within Native communities, eroding the balance values of Indigenous structures of gender identities, roles, and fluidity. There are still mechanisms within Indigenous communities and ways of being

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that carry-on and revitalize traditions. These are reminders of the reciprocal relationships of respect and responsibilities women have had with all life and places they are part of. Through the writings of Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples I explore how Indigenous women are reclaiming their power through remembering, revitalizing, reconstructing, and writing about their own knowledges. I believe it is through these traditions, stories, storytelling, art, songs, and other practices that women are rebuilding what colonization and heteropatriarchy attempted to violently erase and destroy. Using interdisciplinary literature to re-construct how our medicines, spiritual and physical, were stripped from us and how these sacred ways of being and knowing are being reclaimed, I hope to show how Indigenous women are re-empowered and re-discovering our voices. Academic institutions and “sciences” are where the colonial violence exercises its influence (Harding 2009), so through these and other spaces, I explore how our sovereignties and autonomy, individually and collectively, within many Indigenous communities are eroded and replaced with neocolonial systems. I look especially close at work of Indigenous academics on Indigenous feminism, de/anti-colonial theory, and Indigenous environmental activism, leadership, and how the re-construction of traditional and contemporary systems being re-claimed from within the academy and in communities, both rural and urban, manifests itself in art, stories, ceremonies, activism, and in peer reviewed journals, in our own voices is part of the very necessary decolonial process. SETTLER COLONIAL RACISM AND HETEROPATRIARCHY Settler colonialism refers to a particular structure of colonial oppression in which the colonizing society seeks to dispossess Indigenous peoples of their territories through erasing the histories and presences of Indigenous peoples in these territories (Meissner & Whyte 2017; Wolfe, 2006). Settler colonialism has a long history of white supremacy (Bonds & Inwood 2016), heteropatriarchy (Arvin, Tuck, & Morrill 2013), and sexism toward Indigenous women (Smith 2005), children, and even men. These attitudes are the foundation of colonial setter violence in its drive toward power, control, and capital. The colonizers used violence to accomplish their goals. The worldview of the colonizers was and continues to be based in individual wealth and power, often employing the most heinous acts of genocide on Indigenous peoples to access the land, resources, and labor (Dunbar-Ortiz 2014). The extremes the colonizers went to are well documented and no one was spared the violence; young or old, male or female, they were all subjected to the brutality. The colonizers traveled the world conquering every people

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they could including North, Central, and South America. While the histories of these places may have similarities, they are indeed unique in that the peoples in each of these places have been affected over the long term differently. One of the common threads that is woven throughout these different places is how Indigenous women have been impacted by settler colonial patriarchy and violence. Matrilineal societies were often targeted to be attacked by settler colonists (Henning 2007; Irwin, 2007). Many Indigenous traditional systems of governance that included women were attacked and laws and policies were created by settler colonists against women in any space of authority because the many Indigenous systems threatened power structures of white males and their colonial authority (Crenshaw 1993; Martell & Deer 2005). The violence against women, Two-Spirits, children, and men from contact forward is clearly documented from both those who enacted the violence and those who contested the violence. All sides told a grim tale of brutality that lingers on in neocolonial practices that cause Indigenous peoples to still struggle with suicide, missing and murdered women, addiction, and multiple other traumas. Around the world women are reclaiming their power through activism, leadership, and through Indigenous feminist actions (Goeman & Denetdale 2009; Maracle 1996; Simpson 2017). RELATIONSHIPS OF PLACE Indigenous identities and knowledge are place-based and sometimes gendered (deLeeuw, Camerson, & Greenwood 2012; Eikjok 2007; J. Green 2007; Henning 2007). In many Indigenous groups, there are gender specific relationships and responsibilities to knowledge (Tohe 2000). For example, in my own Absentee Shawnee community we have seasons that are managed by the feminine and masculine. During their season, each is responsible for certain parts of the work, games, songs, and ceremonial responsibilities to all their relatives, human and more-than-human. Barker (2015) points out that Indigenous feminism “begins in/on Indigenous territory and with the unique governance and cultures of the Indigenous peoples there, peoples who lived then and now in distinctive systems of (non) human relationships and responsibilities to one another.” The biggest differences between Indigenous feminism and other theories of feminism is settler colonial systems still oppresses and subjugates through racism, sexism, xenophobia, white supremacy, and land dispossession. Much of the resistance is in direct opposition to imperialism and colonialism by Indigenous and allies alike (Barker & Pickrill 2012). Even with the best intentions of nonIndigenous to assist Indigenous peoples, problems arise (deLeeuw 2012). Place identity is a major aspect of Indigeneity and provides a foundation for

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Indigenous ontology and epistemology (Johnson 2012; Larsen & Johnson 2011, 2012). INDIGENOUS FEMINISM Indigenous feminism is unique from western feminism discourses in multiple ways that focuses on settler colonial heteropatriarchy and the ways in which Indigenous women are affected by racism, sexism, and settler colonial dispossession of land and resources (Barker 2015; Green 2007; Harawira 2007; Lugones 2010; Arvin 2013; Maracle 1996; Natividad 2014; Tuck & Recollet 2016). Indigenous feminism is not embraced by all Indigenous women (Maracle 1996; Simpson 2017). Some argue that traditional gender roles and respects are a much older concept than feminism and that the term feminism itself is a western white settler colonial word loaded with politics (Barker 2015; Denis 2007; J. Green 2007). Indigenous feminism is not without criticism based around traditional Indigenous systems of equity and balance. This Indigenous feminism I focus on addresses alternative perspectives of oppressions relating to gender, race, identity, and place relations. A unique component of Indigenous feminism is that it includes settler colonial violence and dispossession, making the combination of these things together valuable and useful in the process of decolonizing our minds, bodies, and reclaiming our powers as Indigenous peoples. Barker (2015) explains: An Indigenous feminism committed to anti-imperial, anti-racist coalition likewise rejects the notion of the great white director providing grand narratives and male heroes of liberatory emancipation from oppression to Black, Indigenous, and other racialized people as if they have no stories and no heroes of empowerment on their own. It rejects the binary constructs of good/bad, victor/victim, hero/loser, revolutionary/traitor in understanding the histories, cultures, and life choices of Black, Indigenous, and other racialized people. It rejects the idea that any woman—Black, Indigenous, or otherwise—needs a man to save her from her shackles to the white male master lest she be fated to live as his slave. It rejects the salvation narrative and fate of heteronormativity. (12)

The reclamation of our traditions, “place-thought” relations (Watts 2013), art, foods, medicines, songs, languages, and stories in our own voices as Indigenous peoples is foundational to the process of healing our communities, selves, and each other from historical and generational traumas. Settler colonialism inflicted far more pain than racism or heteropatriarchy alone. This is painfully clear in how colonization and settler society has imposed

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itself figuratively and literally on women and “nature” in attempts to possess, control, claim, and commodify our places and people’s bodies (Gaard 2014; Kukkanen 2007; Mihesuah 2003; Whyte 2014). Most Indigenous groups have some level of reverence and respect for the varying gender roles and how that relationship deeply connects people together and to place (Anderson 2000; J. Baker 2017; Calhoun, Goeman, & Tsethlikai 2007; Carpenter 2011; Denetdale 2006; Fernandez 2003; Kauanui 2017; Lang 1997). Most individuals who employ the term Indigenous feminism are academics. Outside the academy, the term is used significantly less, if at all. Those within the academy who choose to identify with the term, choose to define the term themselves, arguing to control the nature of the term from being co-opted by non-natives or defined by non-Indigenous people. Those who identify as Indigenous feminists work to define and develop methodologies, methods, and theories as a lens to critique Indigenous issues and framework for responses. Indigenous scholars across disciplines work collectively to collaboratively explain Indigenous feminism as empowerment and a reclaiming of traditional responsibilities and relationships balances and positionality within larger communities. Joyce Green and others detail the importance of appropriating the label and defining it as Indigenous feminist scholars (J. Green 2007; S. Green 2007). There are a significant number of Indigenous women intellectuals writing about Indigenous feminism, situating the theory, as well as the framework it provides. Other methods women are utilizing to express their resistance to settler colonial heteropatriarchy in culturally significant ways are poetry, art, storytelling, and writing in first person (Ross 2009). These methods are disregarded by western systems of academia as inappropriate or unacademic because they do not follow the rules and guidelines created by Eurocentric researchers who are often white and/or male. Sadly, there are significant works that are dismissed by academics because they do not glorify the work of earlier white Eurocentric scholars as well as not conforming to the structures of rigorous academic research standards as created by the colonial heteropatriarchal power holders. In general, Indigenous feminism is about sovereignty and autonomy (Goeman & Denetdale 2009). It is meant to reclaim social justice that has been eroded in Indigenous societies by settler colonial heteropatriarchy and white feminism (Lugones 2010). It is meant to decolonize our communities by creating tools and not using them in ways that work best for Indigenous communities for well-being socially, spiritually, and physically (Calhoun, Goeman, & Tsethlikai 2007). Part of reclaiming equity and justice will require changing laws specifically aimed at disempowering women and other genders.

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In her paper on intersectionality, Crenshaw (1993) critiques identity politics and violence against women of color to address two dimensions of male violence against women; rape and battery, looking at the intersectionality of racism and sexism and the laws and politics that protect males. Also, this analyzes how the laws in Canada are targeting Indigenous women with the laws created to disempower them and how they are fighting back to reclaim their places in the communities and advance women’s rights in the process. Other Indigenous women are addressing the legal universe writing on ethics of decolonization by using their voices to challenge the legal system that is designed to oppress them and to reclaim control of land and laws that protect our bodies and lands. Indigenous women’s voices challenge the systemic racism and sexism of settler colonial powers. CONCLUDING THOUGHTS After reading so much information I still feel there is so much I have left out. While there are many things from which I can draw conclusions, the biggest issue I feel not thoroughly addressed is why it still seems to be that Indigenous women and youth are most visible on the front lines of activism. Their reasoning is little written about, especially through their own experiences. We, as scholars, can offer theories and make educated assumptions on the who, what, when, where, why, and how of Indigenous Peoples in environmental activism, we have yet to hear more from the Indigenous women, Two-Spirited, youth, and the men who support them, who are frontline fighters protecting water, land, and community and are willing to put their life in harm’s way to do so. Many of the most visible women who have truly fought the loudest, hardest, and longest are themselves targeted people of death threats, legal quagmires, and some even plagued by conflicts and in-fighting within their tribal communities. This targeting of micro and macro aggression comes both from the oppressors and those oppressed. Powerful 1-percenter people and their ultra-rich corporations are threatened by these Indigenous/Native women and the attention they bring to the exploitations of people and place and, many times, because it threatens profit margins. I expect that it also threatens the legitimacy of the methods these wealthy and powerful use in their kleptocracy. Indigenous activism pushes back both morally, ethically, culturally, and legally against the system that oppresses and exploits all life. Being Indigenous women who stand up speaking out against imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, and heteropatriarchy is further insult to injury for the white, male religious powerholders.

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Another area silent in environmental activism is how the youth are represented and ways they represent themselves. While in many native community youths are losing connections with their elders and culture, in environmental activism they are renewing their commitment to both. There are small but growing groups of Indigenous youth leaders who are not only bravely putting themselves in dangerous places to protect people, places, and their cultural identities, they do so knowing they are targeted for violence by law enforcement, political power holders, corporations they expose or resist, and the settler colonial system of oppression itself. The combination of Indigenous women and youth in environmental activism is both powerful and fascinating, yet overlooked in academic spaces, especially in geography. I hope to contribute to the scholarship in these areas. My own experience has placed me in unique spaces with some of the most amazing people I was lucky to meet, let alone build long-term relationships with. While my journey has not been easy it has been incredibly rewarding. I do hope to lessen the pain I experienced as a Native, Two-Spirit, cis gendered, able-body, light skinned, mixed race woman hoping the next generation of Native students have more success unfettered by the violence of racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and tokenism. The work is far from over. REFERENCES Anderson, K. 2000. The dismantling of gender equality. A Recognition of Being: Reconstructing Native Womanhood. Toronto, ON: Second Story Press. Retrieved from http:​ //​ unsr. jamesanaya. org/docs/countries/2014-report-canada-a-hrc-27– 52-add-2-en. pdf. Arvin, M., Tuck, E., & Morrill, A. (2013). Decolonizing feminism: Challenging connections between settler colonialism and heteropatriarchy. Feminist Formations, 8–34. Barker, A., & Pickrill, J. 2012. Radicalizing Relationships To and Through Shared Geographies: Why Anarchists Need to Understand Indigenous Connections to Land and Place. Antipode, 44 (5), 1705–25. Barker, J. 2015. Indigenous Feminism. The Oxford Handbook of Indigenous People’s Politics, 1–17. https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.1093​/oxfordhb​/9780195386653​.013​.007. Bonds, A., & Inwood, J. 2016. Beyond White Privilege: Geographies of White Supremacy and Settler Colonialism. Progress in Human Geography, 40 (6), 715–33. Calhoun, A., Goeman, M., & Tsethlikai, M. 2007. Achieving Gender Equity for American Indians. In S. Klein (Ed.), Handbook for Achieving Gender Equity Through Education, 525–51. Mawah NJ: Lawrence, Erlbaum. Carpenter, R. M. 2011. Womanish Men and Manlike Women: The Native American Two-Spirit as Warrior. Gender and Sexuality in Indigenous North America, 1400– 1850, 146–64.

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Crenshaw, Kimberle. 1993. Mapping the Margins: Intersectional, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color. Stanford Law Review 43, 1241–99. deLeeuw, S. 2012. Troubling Good Intentions. Gender, Place and Culture. deLeeuw, S., Camerson, E. S., & Greenwood, M. L. 2012. Participatory And Community-Based Research, Indigenous Geographies, And The Spaces Of Friendship: A Critical Engagement. The Canadian Geographer, 56 (2), 180–94. Denetdale, J. 2006. Chairmen, Presidents, And Princesses: The Navajo Nation, Gender, And The Politics Of Tradition. Wicazo Sa Review, 21 (1), 9–28. Denis, V. S. 2007. Feminism is for Everybody: Aboriginal Women, Feminism and Diversity. In J. Green (Ed.), Making Space For Feminism, 33–52. Canada: Fernwood Publishing. Dunbar-Ortiz, R. 2014. An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Eikjok, J. 2007. Gender, Essentialism and Feminism in Samiland. In J. Green (Ed.), Making Space for Indigenous Feminism, 108–23. Canada: Fernwood Publishing. Fernandez, C. 2003. Coming Full Circle: A Young Man’s Perspective on Building Gender Equity In Aboriginal Communities. Strong Women Stories: Native Vision And Community Survival, 242–60. Gaard, G. 2014. Indigenous Women, Feminism, and the Environmental Humanities. A Journal of the Environmental Humanities, 1 (3). Goeman, M. R., & Denetdale, J. N. 2009. Native Feminisms: Legacies, Interventions, and Indigenous Sovereignties. Wicazo Sa Review, 24 (2), 9–13. Green, Joyce 2007. Taking Account of Aboriginal Feminism. In J. Green (Ed.), Making Space for Indigenous Feminism, 20–33. Canada: Fernwood Publishing. Green, Shirley. 2007. Looking Back, Looking Forward. Chap. 9 In Making Space for Indigenous Feminism, edited by Joyce Green, 160–73. Canada: Fernwood Publishing. Harawira, M. S. 2007. Practicing Indigenous Feminism: Resistance to Imperialism. In J. Green (Ed.), Making Space for Indigenous Feminism, 124–39. Canada: Fernwood Publishing. Harding, S. 2009. Postcolonial and Feminist Philosophies of Science and Technology: Convergences and Dissonances. Postcolonial Studies, 12 (4), 20. Henning, D. K. 2007. Yes, Daughters, We Are Cherokee Women. In J. Green (Ed.), Making Space for Indigenous Feminism, 187–98. Canada: Fernwood. Holmes, Cindy, Sarah, Hunt, & Piedalue, Amy. 2014. Violence, Colonialism, and Space: Towards a Decolonizing Dialogue. ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies 14, no. 2, 539–70 Irwin, K. 2007. Maori Women and Leadership in Aotearoa/New Zealand. In J. Green (Ed.), Making Space for Indigenous Feminism, 174–86. Canada: Fernwood Publishing. Johnson, J. T. 2012. Place-Based Learning and Knowing: Critical Pedagogies Grounded in Indigeneity. GeoJournal, 77 (6), 829–36. Kauanui, J. K. 2017. Indigenous Hawaiian Sexuality and the Politics of Nationalist Decolonization. Critically Sovereign: Indigenous Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies, 45–68.

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Kukkanen, T. B. w. R. 2007. Aboriginal Feminist Action on Violence Against Women. In J. Green (Ed.), Making Space for Indigenous Feminism, 221–32. Canada: Fernwood Publishing. Lang, S. 1997. Various Kinds of Two-Spirit People: Gender Variance and Homosexuality in Native American Communities. Two-Spirit People: Native American Gender Identity, Sexuality, and Spirituality, 100–18. Larsen, S. C., & Johnson, J. T. 2011. Toward and Open Sense of Place: Phenomonology, Affinity, and the Question of Being. Annal of the Association of American Geographers, 102 (3), 632–46. Larsen, S. C., & Johnson, J. T. 2012. In Between Worlds: Place, Experience, and Research in Indigenous Geography. Journal of Cultural Geography, 29 (1), 1–13. Lugones, M. 2010. Towards a Decolonial Feminism. Hypatia, Inc, 25 (4), 742–59. Maracle, L. 1996. I am Woman: A Native Perspective on Sociology and Feminism. Canada: Press Gang Publishers. Martell, C. A., & Deer, S. 2005. Heeding the Voice of Native Women: Toward an Ethic of Decolonization. NDL Rev, 81, 807. Natividad, N. 2014. The Walking of Words: Third World Feminism and the Reimagining of Resistance by Indigenous Communities. AlterNative, 10 (3), 232–47. Meissner, S. N., & Whyte, K. P. 2017. Theorizing Indigeneity, Gender, and Settler Colonialism. Taylor P. C., Martin Alcoff, L. et Anderson L.(eds.), 152–68. Mihesuah, D. A. 2003. Indigenous American Women: Decolonization, Empowerment, Activism. University of Nebraska Press. Ross, L. 2009. From the “F” Word to Indigenous/Feminism. Wicazo Sa Review, 24 (2), 39–52. Simpson, L. B. 2017. As We have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance. University of Minnesota Press. Smith, A. 2005. Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide. South End Press, Duke University Press. Smith, L. T. 1999. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous People (2nd ed.). London & New York: Zed Books Ltd. Tickner, J. A. 2015. Revisiting IR in a Time of Crisis. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 17 (4), 536–53. Tohe, L. 2000. There is No Word for Feminism in My Language. Wicazo Sa Review, 15 (2), 103–10. Tuck, E., & Recollet, K. 2016. Introduction to Native Feminist Texts. English Journal, 106.1, 16–22. Watts, V. 2013. Indigenous Place-Thought & Agency Amoungst Humans and Non-Humans (First Woman and Sky Woman Go on a European World Tour!). Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 2 (1), 20–34. Whyte, K. P. 2014. Indigenous Women, Climate Change Impacts, and Collective Action. Hypatia, Inc, 29 (3), 599–616. Wilson, S. 2001. What is an Indigenous Research Methodology? Canadian Journal of Native Education, 25 (2), 175–79.

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Wilson, S. 2008. Research is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods. Canada: Fernwood Publishing Wolfe, P. 2006. Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native. Journal of Genocide Research, 8 (4), 387–409. doi:10.1080/14623520601056240.

Chapter Eight

Queer Indigeneity Decolonizing our Relationships to Build a Sense of Belonging Melissa Watkinson-Schutten and Michael H. Chang‌‌‌

Those who are able to hold queer and Indigenous identities and histories as a part of a present-day existence carry the responsibilities and legacies that were laid by their ancestors. In spite of multiple and intersecting systems of oppression and dispossession that were forced upon our ancestors through colonization, a reclamation of honoring and embodying queerness and Indigeneity can serve as a tool of resilience. The intersection of queer and Indigenous identities presents a paradigm of how we can relate and belong to the lands and waters, to our communities, to our families, and to our future generations. The authors of this chapter offer two perspectives of finding and building a sense of belonging and strengthening their resilience through the process of decolonizing their approach to Western relationships to place and people. RECLAIMING SELF Tsiáh pá bōe? Have you Eaten?—Michael I am the product of multiple generations of persistence and aboriginal resilience. Several decades ago, speaking Taiwanese—or any non-Mandarin language—was an act of resistance within my homeland of Taiwan. My family is a story of immigrants—my parents were born and raised in Taiwan. For my dad, this land was a foreign land—his family emigrated from China in the post-Mao era. For my mother, Taiwan was her ancestral land—her family was 83

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aboriginal, with roots within the Taiwanese Amis community in Kaohsiung and having oral records for many generations that spanned several hundred years. My family and our history are a melting pot of Chinese, European, and Japanese settlement and imperialism of Taiwan—our extended family spoke almost a dozen languages that included our Indigenous language as well as languages from our settlers. I am the product of the resiliency of immigrants. My parents first immigrated to what is now known as the US in the early 1980s to attend school. While it was under the guise of immigration, it was still during the martial law era of Taiwan, which disproportionately affected non-Han Chinese people in Taiwan, including aboriginal Taiwanese people. While she doesn’t speak about it much, I believe this influenced my mother’s decision to leave Taiwan like many of her peers. My parents permanently moved here in the early 1990s, when I was born, to begin new careers. In the US, they had to learn how to navigate a new society in a language that wasn’t their first (second, third, fourth, or fifth) language. I have memories of helping them study for their citizenship test; of my mom arguing with school officials for putting me in an “English as a Second Language” class because we didn’t speak English at home. My parents frequently said “it’s just something we have to deal with to be in this country” when they encountered anti-immigration or racist sentiments from colleagues and neighbors. I am the product of generations of queer and LGBTQ+ activism and resilience. I knew I was gay from a young age. At the time in the 1990s and early 2000s, as I was coming to terms with my sexual identity, I felt alone and undeserving of community, an unfortunate shared history of many queer peers. Ultimately, my family embraced me after coming out to them. However, in the interim, I withheld sharing my sexual identity from my family for almost a decade. While this was painful, this time also allowed me to slowly unravel the structures and fears that created my own internalized homophobia. This offered me space to learn about generations of queer and trans history and activism and to build my own queer community and chosen family, specifically with queer people of color, across various stages of my personal and professional worlds. When I think of resiliency, I think of my capacity to bring all elements of my identity to every space. Many people who hold multiple marginalized identities are often asked to wear a certain “hat.” For myself, depending on the space I am in, I am often expected to prioritize parts of who I am by wearing my “BIPOC hat,” my “climate scientist hat,” or my “queer hat.” When I am asked or assumed to only represent myself as a piece of who I am, rather than as a whole, I am doing a disservice to the resilience of my ancestors. While I’m still continuing to grow in how I can show up authentically to these spaces—professional spaces, community spaces, and activist spaces, among

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others—my resiliency also recognizes that I have the capacity to grow as I learn and become more comfortable with the various aspects of my identity, particularly as they intersect. About five years ago, I learned that the gender-neutral pronoun for non-binary and gender non-conforming people in Mandarin is 祂, a pronoun we typically reserve for deities. Some creation stories of the Amis people recall that our people are descendants of deities. Knowing that the pronoun we use to refer to our deities in is the same we refer to queer and trans people within our communities simultaneously gives me hope that our language inherently recognizes the value and role of our queer and trans community. In a way, through all the nuances and experiences of being a descendent of multiple cultures and ethnicities, it didn’t feel like a coincidence that one part of my identity—my Chinese identity—was intersecting with my aboriginal Taiwanese identity. It gives me peace and hope that my future queer relatives will understand the power and responsibility of being queer, aboriginal, an immigrant, and resilient. Tsia̍ h pá bōe? Have you eaten? Tsia̍ h pá ah. I am full.

A Place Between—Melissa I descend from Indigenous peoples of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana who walked the trail of tears from our traditional homelands because they cared for and believed in the generations to follow. My ancestors struggled in that forced removal, watched loved ones suffer and die, and held their babies close to them because they believed in the strength of our culture and ways of knowing that future generations could again come to embody. Tribal governments were ultimately established in Oklahoma where our ancestors continue to build relationships with a foreign place and the communities which were involuntarily assimilated. The Chickasaw and Choctaw peoples, from whom I descend, now thrive in place, where new resources have supported cultural, historic, and social programs that help to restore a sense of belonging for communities. My twin sister and I grew up in Washington State where our dad and brother are enrolled Upper Skagit tribal members. Both our dad and our biological father come from generations that have lived in the same geographic corner of Washington State. One father is Indigenous to the place, and the other reflects the European and white settlers who first colonized the United States. My own Indigenous identity is rooted in the heritage of the Chickasaw and Choctaw Nations. Though not the Indigenous place of our ancestors, my

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mother was the last generation of my lineage to be born in Chickasaw nation in Oklahoma. As an often white-passing queer Indigenous woman, colonization has attempted to bury deep within me the significant identities and histories of what makes me who I am. I grew up in a home that nurtured community through Protestant beliefs and an evangelical Christian Church that repressed my development. My parents have been stewards of colonization because that has been their only option. They made mistakes when I was a child, as all parents do, though they have always done what they believed at the time to be what was best for their family. Yet my parents’ generation is only two to three generations removed from boarding schools, and three to four generations removed from the era of dispossession. The trauma that they experienced and witnessed in their own childhoods is beyond what I could comprehend and of which I know that I will never fully appreciate. Yet these outcomes of colonization sustained by my parents serve as a vessel to further engrain the Western attempts at Indigenous erasure. My childhood experiences in the Church forced me to suppress my queer identity so deeply that I was married and in a heterosexual relationship by the age of 20. My privilege as a white-passing Native, as someone who presented straight and who was raised in a dominant culture in a working-middle class community of Western values through the church, allowed me to attract options that would lead me to a life suitable to a conservative Western culture. While my cousins had similar privileges, several grew up with influences and impacts of substance abuse that fought to bury generations of trauma, while I was influenced and impacted by the running away and assimilation from generations of trauma. As many Indigenous people within my generation are recognizing, holding onto my privileges and the impacts of assimilation that my parents had followed meant that I was carrying a loss inside of me that I did not know how to identify, nor did I believe that I deserved to identify with. RECLAIMING RELATIONSHIPS Inherent Responsibilities—Michael Queerness proffers us access—even reluctant access—to a culture and history of queer spaces. While these spaces can be rooted in a physical place and space—such as queer establishments or historically queer neighborhoods— they do not always have to be. Sometimes, queer people require establishing or re-establishing relationships in these spaces. While these relationships, some of whom I have come to call my “chosen family,” are not a one-to-one replacement of bio-legal families (or in my case, a connection to my ancestors

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and Taiwanese heritage), these relationships help queer people continue to explore and define their relationship to queerness and their queer identities. Like many people who have learned and grown in Western institutions, I have internalized Western teachings and “scientific frameworks” that advocate a worldview where scientific research is inherently separate from our lived experiences. Western science can reinforce binary choices and narratives—you are either gay or straight, you are cis or trans, you are white or not, you are a scientist, or you are not. This “either-or” paradigm is rooted in a history of settler colonialism and white supremacy, leading me to internalize that my identities are separate from each other and that my personal identity is implicitly separate from my professional identity. This is despite knowing that our queer identities are linked to health outcomes, economic opportunity, interpersonal violence, and exposure to environmental degradation and climate change impacts, with people who hold multiple intersecting marginalized identities—such as queer Black and Indigenous people—experiencing greater burdens than other counterparts. Indigenous queer people experience many of the first and most severe impacts on multiple fronts: queer Boricuans had limited, if any, resources during the federal response to Hurricane Maria in 2017; Indigenous women and trans women experience higher rates of domestic and interpersonal violence; and queer and trans healthcare services are often an afterthought during and after natural disasters (Goldsmith, Raditz, and Méndez 2021; Lavers 2017; Rising Voices 2019). For myself, prior to outing myself to professional peers, I always do an internal safety check where I ask myself, “If I come out to this person, am I safe?” Western scientific systems have led me to internalize that my queer identity, that my racial identity, that my immigration status and history, are implicitly separate from my day job as a climate scientist and practitioner. Despite knowing that this is inherently untrue, that our experiences shape how we as queer scientists show up to scientific spaces and that our queer identities both motivate and influence our science, data on queer people in the environmental field and the research conducted with queer communities are sorely lacking. While an indirect (or even direct at times) attempt of erasure, I have learned from my own queer BIPOC community that our experiences aren’t validated by peer-review literature, but by each other’s stories and experiences. In 2018, I helped convene a panel alongside many others named Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for Environmental Progress at the Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference (Chang and Lowell 2018). This initial effort encompassed the lived experiences from environmental scientists and practitioners that represented Indigenous, queer, non-binary, immigrant, women, and refugee identities. The conversation at the conference panel spanned across multiple topics, such as the hiring and retention of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) within the environmental field, the necessity to include Indigenous

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partners in conservation work, experiences, and stories of microaggressions and macroaggressions that reinforced systemic racism within the environmental field. Following the conference, our collective—comprised of mostly queer and BIPOC professionals—organized a symposium dedicated to environmental justice and equity efforts within the Salish Sea, called the Salish Sea Equity & Justice Symposium. In doing this, our group of queer BIPOC environmental professionals built a new—or at least new to me—version of queer BIPOC spaces within the environmental profession that was also rooted in a geographical place—the Salish Sea. As part of this community-building, we had to collectively unlearn Western decision-making systems and design a process that focused on community and collective decision-making, or a community of practice. From our own lived experiences, we understood that various types of Western decision-making systems—democratic processes, executive and program committee structures, consensus-based decision-making—have intentionally and unintentionally silenced or disregarded the experiences and perspective of Indigenous people, people of color, and queer people. When relationality—or more specifically reciprocity—isn’t practiced, it can reflect and reinforce broken and unnurtured relationships and undermine our well-being. These extractive and imperialistic relationships focus on “taking” from the Earth rather than giving and nurturing it, leading to environmental injustices, anthropogenic climate change, and disproportionate health and economic disparities for queer and Indigenous people (Whyte 2018; Gram-Hanssen, Schafenacker, and Bentz 2021). Furthermore, many responses to issues such as climate change employ frameworks and approaches that are steeped in Western values and perpetuate settler colonial frameworks. Scientists and practitioners may treat Tribal Nations and tribal communities as a homogenous group to engage with, excluding those within the community most affected by climate change such as elders, youth, women, and queer people (Johnson, Parsons, and Fisher 2021; Dhillon 2020). As queer people, as immigrants, and as Indigenous people, we fully understand there is an inherent responsibility to take care of our relations, our homes, and our families. Our efforts in organizing the inaugural Salish Sea Equity & Justice Symposium reflected this deeply held responsibility. Despite federal, state, and local political efforts to marginalize and silence queer and Indigenous people, we know that we have continued to be resilient and have sought out and built our own queer communities, families, and support systems. In building queer communities and families, in partnership with other queer people, there is a sense and obligation that we cannot take our relationships and rights for granted. This extends to our relationship with the lands and waters. In partnership with these other queer BIPOC professionals—many of us who held Indigenous identities but were not Indigenous

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to the land we created our community in—to progress work around environmental equity and justice, we acknowledged that our collective efforts were in service and reciprocity to the unceded lands and waterways of the Indigenous peoples in the Pacific Northwest where we now all called home, the same lands that offered us this opportunity to connect and build relationships with other queer folx that shared similar histories and experiences of resilience. Our Western influences preach that science is a separate entity from our own identities and ways of knowing, yet our identities and worldviews are the lens in which we analyze and interpret “science” and “research.” Ignoring my own queer identity, I’ve learned, is a way in which I reinforce a settler colonial practice in a field that has been built by older, heterosexual, white men. Being authentically myself and bringing all aspects of my identity—being queer, an immigrant, an Indigenous person—is a way that I can continue to disrupt the settler colonial systems that lift up one way of knowing, the Western scientific cosmology where science is “objective,” at the disregard of others, such as Indigenous cosmologies where our science and work is inherently relative to people and place (Mistry 2009). In many Coast Salish cultures, there is a saying that promotes the responsibility of people to protect our environment and resources for the next seven generations. As queer people, we know that we have benefited from generations of advocacy and progress from our queer ancestors—and we have now been passed the torch from these ancestors to carry this responsibility for future generations in order to continue advocating to protect the lands and waters that hold and shelter our communities, ensuring that our future environmental policies and actions acknowledge the existence of queer and Indigenous people, and normalizing approaches for us to integrate our own experiences to ensure that actions and policies do not only reflect Western and heteronormative values and worldviews. When we are able to synergize our queer families with our responsibility to place, we can practice our obligation to future generations of queer folx and Indigenous people. A Seat at the Table—Melissa When contemplating the outcomes of my choices in young adulthood I came to realize that I was living inauthentically. This realization led me to accept the identities that make me who I am as a queer and Indigenous woman, and required taking a new journey to build a sense of belonging. My identities do not align with the conservative Western and dominant cultures that I grew up in. To live more authentically, my relationships to places and people have had to change intentionally. One of the greatest attempts to decolonize my Western relationships to place and people was to build power and influence within my community and

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run for local public office. As a specialist in equity and environmental justice, I found an immense need for bringing new leadership that would address inequities and create policies that considered climate change in a community that was continuing to grow and develop. I ran for an open City Council seat in the midst of a pandemic, and one of the most challenging moments of racial divisiveness of my lifetime. Being a political leader had been a consideration for me ever since I was an undergraduate student and had the opportunity to travel to Washington, DC, and The Hague as part of my studies in human rights and international relations. I was enamored by the hustle and bustle of the cities, the passion and drive for justice, and privileged to see behind the curtain of how sausage is made. While I had been a visible activist for the issues I cared about, I realized that policy and the need to understand people and their motivations more greatly were key to making the tangible changes that activists fight for. I wanted a seat at that table. I went on to pursue a master’s degree in Policy Studies so that I could build the skills and understand the tools that are necessary to create and transform policy. As a graduate student, one of my professors had told me that I would never become elected because I was a Native American woman. I believe that he was aiming to acknowledge the layers of racism and sexism that exist in our society that could prevent a Native American woman from being elected, but I also believe that as a person of color himself, the lack of representation in elected positions by Indigenous people and people of color led him to doubt the opportunities that I was aiming to pursue. In late 2020, one of the first Native American women to be elected to US congress, Congresswoman Deb Haaland from New Mexico, was rumored to be considered for nomination by President Biden as the first Native American to serve as Secretary of the Department of Interior. I was inspired by her leadership and began pondering the potential opportunities for restoring our lands that her leadership could bring. When I watched her respond to difficult questions in her nomination hearing, I was wonderstruck by Congresswoman Haaland’s tenacity and conviction as she detailed her commitment to the lands and people she aimed to serve. Seeing a Native American woman adorned in her regalia take a bold step to stand for the rights of places and people offered a new representation that emboldened me to decide to actively pursue my path to representing my community as an elected official. There were four local elected political seats that I had my attention on. Of these, three were represented by White democrats who already had the support of the majority of voters, one of whose term would be up for re-election the following year. My active pursuit for election sat idly while I was building relationships and applying to programs that supported and empowered women of color leaders to seek political office. I learned that my City Council

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representative would not be running for re-election one week before the filing to run for local office had opened. By the end of that filing week, I was one of seven candidates to seek to represent my community. Of the seven candidates, I was the only woman and the only person of color. All but one of the men I was running against had a name that started with a “J.” After a lottery draw of alphabet tiles, it was determined that my name would be on the top of the ballot, followed by a “Craig,” then “John,” “Johannes,” “Jeff,” “Jeff,” and finally, “Jim.” I knew that the limit in diversity among the other candidates made me stick out as a candidate, but I also understood that I was fighting for more representation, seeking greater change, and had a larger hurdle to cross than each of the other candidates would. Having a seat at the table and fostering relationships within my community is an opportunity to empower and embolden spaces with BIPOC representation and can strengthen connections to the place. The campaign that I ran for local office was built by and for community—I am only but a culmination of the ancestors, community, and chosen family that have nurtured me. Centering community in my campaign, and championing equity and environmental justice within our city policies was one powerful approach that I was honored to step into to provide reciprocity to what has been offered to me. My community offered their creativity, time, networks, dollars, and encouragement as they believed in what was possible if local leadership reflected their values. I won in the primary election by nearly 10 percent above the candidate that followed me. Throughout the remainder of the campaign meeting neighbors, hearing local concerns and issues, addressing local government, and continuing to center community all reinforced and strengthened my sense of belonging. I was showing up as my full authentic self, sharing my vulnerable and true values; all of which meant that the relationships that I was continuing to cultivate were building on a foundation of resiliency. My campaign team organized an event called “A Seat at the Table: A Conversation Between Local Women of Color Leaders” where local elected women of color and women of color candidates, with the facilitation of a local woman of color business leader, discussed the opportunities and hardships of being an “only” and often “first” at the metaphorical table. We talked about how we may be the “first” but we will ensure we wouldn’t be the “last,” and how much the love and encouragement from community is essential for us to have the strength to keep taking that seat. I lost in the general election by roughly 6 percent. Grief followed shame and sadness. Then, gratitude followed nostalgia and relief. There is no doubt that my team and I worked the most and fought the hardest for that seat. Although the greater community had not overcome the fear of progress to the extent that we had believed in, it had undoubtedly become a significantly

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different community than it was the six months prior to the final election. Making a difference in and for your community does not always look like winning. Sometimes it looks like showing up as your whole queer and Indigenous self, bringing along your values of relationships and reciprocity, and modeling a sense of belonging and resilience for others. Winning looks like the stories of parents who recall to me how their child answered the door when I knocked, and later advocated to their parents that they vote for me because they were so excited to see themselves reflected in a local candidate. ATTEMPTS AT ERASURE Queer Resilience Queer people—especially queer Indigenous people and other queer people of color—navigate a world rooted in patriarchal and heteronormative systems of oppression, a legacy of European colonization and Christianization. Within the US, federal policies and missionary efforts have been tools to criminalize and stigmatize queer people in the US, depriving many queer people of specific rights and privileges such as medical and healthcare access, the right to marry, and only until recently, federal civil rights protections against employment discrimination. Even more so, social stigmatization has led to the displacement of queer people from their bio-legal (members of a group who are biologically or legally related) nuclear families and communities that may have closely held religious or societal qualms against queer people and their existence (Levin et al. 2020). Compounding this, legacy effects from these patriarchal and heteronormative policies have, in some cases, indoctrinated queer and LGBT communities with these hierarchies where white cisgender men have more privilege compared to Black and Indigenous queer people of color, other queer people of color, trans and non-binary individuals, and other people who fall outside of this white cis-gender identity groups. This is evident in reports that document statistical disparities in access to healthcare and social services, access to community support, and in rates of interpersonal violence (Mollon 2012; Macapagal, Bhatia, and Greene 2016). Creating and finding belonging is often an act of self and communal resiliency for queer people, particularly for queer people who do not hold white and cisgender identities. As an act of resiliency—whether to political and legal policies that dispossess queer people of fundamental rights, whether familial dispossession because of our queer identities, or a survival mechanism in navigating a queer landscape that privileges white cisgender folks—queer people have found “family” outside of traditional bio-legal conceptualizations of family. Finding a “chosen family” of queer people is simultaneously

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a reaction to political or societal marginalization as well as a forceful act of being resilient (Wilkinson et al. 2012). Reciprocal care within these familial and community relationships—acts of giving and sharing resources, wisdom, support, intimacy, and shelter, among other things—to each other is a fundamental element of queer and trans resilience and well-being (Levin et al. 2020). Finding and having a “chosen family” does not necessarily displace or replace a bio-legal family; rather this new family dynamic offers a sense of belonging where the reciprocal care can offer what is otherwise missing for queer resilience. Indigenous Resilience Settler colonialism and white supremacy have led to policies of forced relocation, assimilation, and termination by the US government, stripping many Native communities of their ancestral homelands, cultural practices, and lifeways. Forced relocation and removal displaced many Tribes—dispossessing them from their ancestral lands and waters. Assimilation through policies further dispossessed many Native communities of their cultures, prohibiting Native people and their communities from practicing ceremonies and speaking their languages. Christian and government-run residential and boarding schools forcibly separated Native children from their families to assimilate and “civilize” Native youth, but also led to the sexual, physical, and mental abuse of these same youth. Termination-era policies additionally relocated many Native people into urban centers during the 1950s and 1960s in an effort to further colonize Indian lands for resource mining and extraction. The legacy of these policies—a direct result of European colonization and missionary efforts—have led to disproportionate health disparities, pollution burden, and lack of social and economic mobility for many Native peoples in the US (Jones 2006; Fernández‐Llamazares et al. 2019). These policies have also indoctrinated many Indigenous communities with Western Euro-centric frameworks of sexuality and gender (Picq 2020). In tandem with the legacy and ongoing efforts of settler colonialism, this has led to disproportionate violence against Indigenous women, trans people, two-spirit, non-binary, and queer peoples (Ristock et al. 2017). The success of colonial attempts at Indigenous erasure can hardly be quantified, as those who seek reclamation today carry the burden of centuries of unlearning and healing.

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DECOLONIZING WESTERN FRAMEWORKS OF RELATIONSHIPS For queer people—especially queer Indigenous people—we hold each of our identities and their respective histories, acknowledging our existence is the result of our ancestors’ efforts, and know that our multiple identities and dynamics shape our relationships (Levin et al. 2020). Sense of belonging— with community, with the land and waters, with our chosen family—can be a critical component of self and community resilience. In particular, this sense of belonging extends to our obligation of reciprocity with our social and ecological environments. Our queerness and queer identities amplify other elements of our identity. Acts of reciprocity—or the idea that our relationship with our environment and our families requires iterative giving and receiving—is a fundamental element of well-being and culture for many Indigenous peoples (Kimmerer 2011). Our queerness extends this knowledge and responsibility to other facets of our lives—that being reciprocal with place, with our community, with our chosen family, is simultaneously a responsibility but also an act of self-care. When these reciprocal relationships are distorted and disrupted due to settler colonialism and Western ideals around resource use and extraction, there are many cascading and inter-related issues that result, such as overexploitation of natural resources, climate change, and the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women human-rights crisis (Joseph 2021; Whyte 2018). Even in response to these issues, without Indigenous and queer values of reciprocity, Western perspectives and beliefs can dominate the narrative of issues affecting Native communities. Western constructs of “sustainability” and “natural resource management” still operate in this paradigm that humans are not only separate from the environment, but humans also “know better” and exert their management practices on landscapes and waterscapes, reinforcing settler colonial dynamics and structures (Dhillon 2020; Johnson, Parsons, and Fisher 2021). Despite this history of attempted genocide, queer and Native people in the US have been resilient. There is vast diversity of sexual and gender frameworks that encompass ancestral understandings about the roles and importance of queer, two-spirit, trans, non-binary, and non-gender conforming peoples within their respective Indigenous cultures. Relationships with ancestral aboriginal lands, community with one’s Tribe, or with bio-legal or nuclear families may not always exist for queer and Indigenous people because of the history of US settler colonialism. Many emergent communities such as urban Natives, queer “chosen families,” and of Tribal nations persisting on allotted or relocated lands, have redefined their ideals of relationality and reciprocity with their current lands, communities, and environments. In

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this redefinition, queer Indigenous peoples call upon their own as well as their collective Indigenous intergenerational wisdom (Picq 2020; Vinyeta, Whyte, and Lynn 2015). In Hawai’i, māhū are both feminine and masculine individuals; in Cree, ayyahkwew means neither man or woman; in Inuktitut, sipiniq means infant whose sex changes at birth; in Kanein’keha, onón:wat means a person that has the pattern of two spirits inside their body (Sterritt 2016). The term “two-spirit” has been widely adopted to recognize Indigenous peoples whose gender or sexuality may cross or descend from Western binary understandings of gender and sexual orientation. Our Indigenous languages hold the wisdom that gender and sexuality are spectrums. While the roles of queer people across Indigenous cultures are varied, our Indigenous languages already hold the wisdom that gender and sexuality are spectrums and reinforce the essentiality and sacredness of queer peoples’ roles within our ancestral cultures. While Western worldviews have led to the simultaneous and additive dispossession of Indigenous people from their worldview, knowledge systems, and ancestral lands and of queer people of rights, access to services, and sometimes nuclear bio-legal family structures, we also know that our queer and Native communities have internalized systems of oppression such as racism, homophobia, misogyny, and transphobia. Unlearning conscious and unconscious biases is a way to decolonize Western paradigms of relating to each other and our surroundings. Returning to this ethos of reciprocity—of providing and caring for individuals who are knowledge holders, such as elders, and queer and two-spirit people, of giving to the land and waters more than we take from it—can simultaneously create a sense of belonging for ourselves and others while also serving as an act of resistance against settler colonial histories and policies. As queer Indigenous scholars and practitioners, we hold these histories, and know it is our obligation to bring our own experiences into this space to reflect on the systems and frameworks and what it means to be authentically resilient. REFERENCES Chang, Michael and Natalie Lowell. “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for Environmental Progress.” Panel, Seattle, WA, Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference, 2018. Converging Voices: Building Relationships & Practices for Intercultural Science. Boulder, CO: 7th Annual Rising Voices Workshop, 2019. Dhillon, Carla M. “Indigenous Feminisms: Disturbing Colonialism in Environmental Science Partnerships.” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 6, no. 4 (2020): 483–500. Fernández‐Llamazares, Álvaro, María Garteizgogeascoa, Niladri Basu, Eduardo Sonnewend Brondizio, Mar Cabeza, Joan Martínez‐Alier, Pamela McElwee, and

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Victoria Reyes‐García. “A State‐of‐the‐Art Review of Indigenous Peoples and Environmental Pollution.” Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management 16, no. 3 (2019): 324–41. Goldsmith, Leo, Vanessa Raditz, and Michael Méndez. “Queer and Present Danger: Understanding the Disparate Impacts of Disasters on LGBTQ+ Communities.” Disasters, (Sept. 2021). https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.1111​/disa​.12509. Gram-Hanssen, Irmelin, Nicole Schafenacker, and Julia Bentz. “Decolonizing Transformations Through ‘Right Relations.’” Sustainability Science, (May 2021). https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.1007​/s11625​-021​-00960​-9. Johnson, Danielle E., Meg Parsons, and Karen Fisher. “Indigenous Climate Change Adaptation: New Directions for Emerging Scholarship.” Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, (June 2021). https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.1177​/25148486211022450. Jones, David. S. “The Persistence of American Indian Health Disparities.” American Journal of Public Health 96, no. 12 (2006): 2122–34. Joseph, A. Skylar. “A Modern Trail of Tears: The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) Crisis in the US.” Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine 79, (2021): 102136. Kimmerer, Robin. “Restoration and Reciprocity: The Contributions of Traditional Ecological Knowledge.” In Human Dimensions of Ecological Restorations, ed. Dave Egan, Evan E. Hjerpe, and Jesse Abrams, (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2011), 257–76. Lavers, Michael K. “LGBT Puerto Ricans Still Reeling from Hurricane Maria.” Washington Blade, Oct. 18, 2017. https:​//​www​.washingtonblade​.com​/2017​/10​/18​/ lgbt​-puerto​-ricans​-families​-still​-reeling​-hurricane​-maria​/. Levin, Nina J., Shanna K. Kattari, Emily K. Piellusch, and Erica Watson. “’We Just Take Care of Each Other: Navigating ‘Chosen Family’ in the Context of Health, Illness, and the Mutual Provision of Care amongst Queer and Transgender Young Adults.” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 17, no. 19 (2020): 7346. Macapagal, Kathryn, Ramona Bhatia, and George J. Greene. “Differences in Healthcare Access, Use, and Experiences Within a Community Sample of Racially Diverse Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning Emerging Adults.” LGBT Health 3, no. 6 (2016): 434–42. Mistry, Jay. “Indigenous Knowledges.” In The International Encyclopedia of Human Geography 5, ed. Rob Kitchin and Nigel Thrift, (Oxford: Elsevier, 2009), 371–76. Mollon, Lea. “The Forgotten Minorities: Health Disparities of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered Communities.” Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved 23, no. 1 (2012): 1–6. Picq, Manuela L. “Decolonizing Indigenous Sexualities: Between Erasure and Resurgence.” In The Oxford Handbook of Global LGBT and Sexual Diversity Politics, ed. Michael J. Bosia, Sandra M. McEvoy, and Momin Rahman, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020). Ristock, Janice, Art Zoccole, Lisa Passante, and Jonathon Potskin. “Impacts of Colonization on Indigenous Two-Spirit/LGBTQ Canadians’ Experiences of

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Migration, Mobility, and Relationship Violence.” Sexualities 22, no. 5–6 (2019): 767–84. Sterritt, Angela. “Indigenous Languages Recognize Gender States Not Even Named in English.” The Globe and Mail, Mar. 10, 2016. https:​//​www​.theglobeandmail​ .com​/life​/health​-and​-fitness​/health​/indigenous​-languages​-recognize​-gender​-states​ -not​-even​-named​-in​-english​/article29130778​/. Vinyeta, Kirsten, Kyle Powys Whyte, and Kathy Lynn. 2015. Climate Change through an Intersectional Lens: Gendered Vulnerability and Resilience in Indigenous Communities in the United States. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station. Whyte, Kyle. “Settler Colonialism, Ecology, and Environmental Justice.” Environment and Society: Advances in Research 9, no. 1 (2018): 125–44. Wilkinson, Jennifer, Michael Bittman, Martin Holt, Patrick Rawstorne, Susan Kippax, and Heather Worth. “Solidarity Beyond Sexuality: The Personal Communities of Gay Men.” Sociology 46, no. 6 (2012): 1161–77.

Chapter Nine

Building Sustainability by Creating Belonging Merisa Jones

This chapter contributes to the area of focus: the ecological sustainability of self-identity by including research on Building Sustainability by Creating Belonging. In my research, I share my personal journey to re-building culturally driven educational systems that include and nurture a deep sense of “belonging and tribal identity.” Pre-contact, the Lummi people had education systems in place that ensured the transmission of sacred knowledge, the learning took place within the house, and it was the family’s responsibility to ensure the child grew up knowing the family values. The house of learning was broken down due to colonization and forced upon assimilation, creating a generational gap. The traditional ways of teaching and learning were replaced with foreign knowledge systems. These foreign knowledge systems we once knew caused generations of historical trauma that damaged the family structures. Throughout my educational journey, I research ways to restore the balance by looking at the importance of self-identity, belonging, and community. One proposed solution is to implement the pre-contact house of learning framework within our K-12 systems so our children can learn their place-based knowledge. We must continue looking for ways to decolonize our education system by asserting our tribal sovereignty. It is our responsibility to be thinking seven generations ahead so that one day our grandchildren will not have to spend their lives healing from the impacts of intergenerational trauma. Since Time Immemorial, the Lummi people have always had everything they needed to survive. Pre-contact the learning happened within the house, our people lived off the ecology of their natural environment and through our community structures, we ensured sustainability from generation to 99

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generation. When European contact was made, the destruction of the village structure that existed began. Our traditional ways of teaching and learning were replaced with foreign knowledge systems. This historical trauma caused generations of damage to the family structures and the inter-generational “imprinting” and transfer of sacred knowledge. From a historical standpoint, mainstream education has caused our people generations of hurt, anger, and confusion but, likewise, I believe education has the potential to help heal what has been broken. Pre-contact education has now been replaced by western education systems framed within a colonial context. Today, our community is healing this generational trauma by restoring cultural practices within every aspect of life to rebuild strong self-identities. In this chapter, I share my personal journey to re-building culturally driven educational systems that include and nurture a deep sense of “belonging and tribal identity.” An individual’s worldview is constantly shaped by people, places, and experiences throughout his/her/their life. My worldview has been shaped by my Elders and my experiences with them. MY JOURNEY:  RECEIVING GIFTS If you had told me ten years ago that I would be a graduate student embracing her education journey, I could honestly say I wouldn’t have believed you. The path I took was not a straight line. Instead, it was full of rough terrain and winding roads. I embrace each obstacle and every hurdle that I’ve overcome because they have gotten me where I am today. My education journey started in my late twenties. I was in a place where I felt very lost. I had so much hurt, anger, and pain that I pushed away everything and everyone I loved. All the things that I once held in importance, such as family, education, and our traditional canoeing, were no longer a significant part of my life. It took me years to find myself again. One day I just decided it was time to “pick myself back up.” This started by deciding to go back to Northwest Indian College and work toward my degree. I want to share a story about my late Grandfather and the last couple of years I spent with him. When I started my education journey again, my Grandfather became very elderly. I remember it being election season, and for the first time in what felt like forever, he wasn’t re-elected back onto the tribal council. After this, my Grandfather was asked to work for the Northwest Indian College in the Coast Salish Institute and teach the students about sovereignty. I signed up for his class because I wanted to have the chance to learn from him and spend time with him. He would spend the class session talking to us about his time on council and how he learned what sovereignty means.

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I don’t think I had a complete understanding of what sovereignty meant at the time, but little did I know the stories he shared would stay with me forever. During the class, he talked about when he left the Council and came back to teach in the Coast Salish Institute and began to feel re-connected to “who he really was again.” Northwest Indian College wasn’t built on just any land. It sits on the original allotment of Hereditary Chiefs Henry Kwina and August Martin of the Lummi Nation. My Grandfather always knew that Chief Henry Kwina had a daughter named Rosalie, who was the mother to Mildred Ross, and Mildred Ross Jones, is the beloved mother to my Grandfather, the late William E. Jones Sr. My Grandfather Chief August Martin was our tribal historian, who raised my Grandpa. While teaching at the Coast Salish Institute, my Grandfather started to teach the Lummi language. I signed up for his class again, and I told him, “Grandpa, I didn’t know you spoke Lummi Language” he said “I didn’t know that either.” He told me he started receiving these gifts after coming to the Coast Salish Institute to teach. He started to remember the language old August Martin taught him. I never really knew if I believed my Grandfather about how he began to speak the Lummi language until I experienced something similar myself. Unfortunately, my Grandfather became too weak to teach at the college. When I started my bachelors program, I would still go to him for advice on my homework or interview him for a research project. I would tell him about my topic, and he would tell me a story in return. He never gave me an answer but instead replied with an experience. I can still hear him right now as I’m writing this. I was in my senior year of my bachelors program when my Grandfather passed away and completing my degree without my Grandfather was one of the hardest things I had to do. It’s hard to express what happened after he left this world. I had a hard time moving on, wishing he was here to talk to so I could continue his work. But I realized when he left me, he didn’t leave me empty-handed. He left me his gifts. It was like everything he had been telling me had just begun to connect and have a deeper meaning. He sparked a fire in me that started the foundation on which my education journey is built. It was through reconnecting with my Grandfather and his stories that made me passionate about school again, and it was through school that I was able to find myself again. MY EDUCATION JOURNEY:  HEALING OUR PEOPLE When I first entered my education journey, it stemmed from being passionate about finding a way to heal our people. I saw first-hand the many people in

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my community suffering from addiction. I wanted to know as a community what we could do to help our people heal. At first, I thought of what I now call surface-level solutions to an iceberg of a problem. Through the mentorship of my capstone faculty, I was able to see that the answers I was suggesting would not help me get to the root of the issues of addiction. I began to think of what came first, prevention or rehabilitation. I began to look at: What does youth prevention mean? What does youth prevention look like? Is it a program after school? Is it participating in a dance group? Is it going to youth basketball tournaments? I thought of why youth turn to drugs—many of them come from broken homes due to drug and alcohol abuse. I began to make observations about the relationship between helping children and re-building a strong cultural identity as a form of youth prevention. If children know who they are, where they come from, their family values, tribal values, and tribal language, they are less likely to be led down the path of substance abuse because they are grounded in their tribal identity. I was fortunate to have Dr. Cornel Pewewardy as an instructor in my education journey, and he shared with our class about a “Drowning Parable.” Once upon a time a woman, strolling along a riverbank, hears a cry for help and seeing a drowning person rescues him. She no sooner finishes administering artificial respiration when another person cries out loud which also requires another rescue from the river. Again, she has only just helped the second person when a third call for help is heard. After a number of rescues, she begins to realize that she is pulling some people out of the river more than once. By this time, the rescuer is exhausted and resentful, feeling that if people are stupid or careless enough to keep landing in the river, they can rescue themselves. She is too annoyed, tired, and frustrated to look around her. Shortly after, another woman walking along the river hears the cries for help and begins rescuing people. She, however, wonders why so many people are drowning in this river. Looking around her, she sees a hill where something seems to be pushing people off into the river. Realizing this as the source of the drowning problem, she is faced with a difficult dilemma: If she rushes uphill, people presently in the river will drown; if she stays at the river pulling them out, more people will be pushed in. What can she do? (Derman-Sparks, & Carol Brunson Phillips, 1997, 2)

I realized this was the same question I was asking myself when reflecting on prevention vs. rehabilitation. Realizing that building a strong self-identity happens within the family, what happens when the family structure is broken due to the impacts of colonization and inter-generational trauma? Do we start with rebuilding strong parents (helping people downriver), or do we have to adjust our priorities (uphill) and focus on building strong children with strong self-identities who build a strong, healthy family? I concluded that if we ever

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want to bridge the generation gap, we must start with the youth in helping them build a strong self-identity. CONTINUING THE VISION: RETELLING THE STORIES OF OUR OLD PEOPLE When I continued my education by working toward my masters degree, I was interested in identifying how we help children build strong self-identities. I had the opportunity to work on a group capstone project with Brandon Morris “Telem’ichten” of the Lummi Nation and Christina Grendon “Ste wat alth” of the Sauk Suiattle Tribe. Our work started by using the Honorable House of Learning framework to help guide us. Understanding that pre-contact, we had education systems in place that ensured the transmission of sacred knowledge (Jones, Morris, & Grendon, 2018), the learning took place within the house, and it was the family’s responsibility to ensure the child grew up knowing the family values (Jones, Morris, & Grendon, 2018). The house of learning had been broken down due to the impacts of colonization, and it created a generational gap for children. We wanted to take the Honorable House of Learning framework and incorporate it within our Lummi Nation School (LNS) to ensure the children received the foundation knowledge needed to form a strong self-identity. To access this private knowledge, we must incorporate culture, language, and history at LNS. I recall having a conversation with my Grandmother and explained culture isn’t a jacket you put on and take off, and it must be inter-woven within everything you do. Our research question stemmed from wanting to carry out the work of our old people. We knew the past leaders had a vision for the LNS, and we, as researchers, needed to have a complete understanding of our starting point. To help guide our research, we used my late Grandfather’s visioning philosophy (Figure 9.1).

Figure 9.1 Merisa Jones, Visioning Philosophy Graphic, 2022.

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VISIONING PHILOSOPHY Merisa: What do you mean by the visioning process, Grandpa? Grandpa: So, let’s say you wanted to do a visioning process for the ideal vision for education. There are two circles . . . one is called the “now” circle, and the other is called the “past.” The circles include what is going on now and what we can do for the future, but it also includes feelings. And the arrow in between, what do we have to get there? One day I realized something was missing. It was a past circle, understanding that we can’t know where we are going until we understand where we have been. The past circles were mostly filled with hurt. . . . This was the time of boarding schools. I then added another circle, which was pre-contact. We had to guess what that was because I wasn’t here. I studied the circles, I could see why we were having problems. We were focused on different issues. Merisa: How does the visioning process help you come up with solutions for the future? Grandpa: When you look at the four circles, all the things that have happened to us. Part of our problem is we are looking at our recent “past” circle and almost claiming them as our roots, our roots go back to pre-contact. We have to go back to our roots, and that is what we need to do. I think that is the only way we are going to reach our visions. Go back to who we are. The words ‘go back to who you are’ resonated with me. Our starting point for our research project was asking the question “What was the original vision for Lummi Nation School?” The past leaders that fought to have a tribal school had a vision in place, and we felt it wasn’t our place to recreate what already existed (Jones, Morris, & Grendon, 2018). Defining the original vision was important to me because of my Grandfather’s role in ensuring Lummi children had their tribal school. He saw firsthand the number of children in the community struggling within the public-school education system. He travelled to Washington, D.C. and fought to secure educational funding to support the Lummi Nation having our own tribal school. His goal was for the community to educate the children without external barriers. His goal was to leave behind the historical trauma of our past. The first year of the Lummi Tribal School started with only five students. My Grandfather shared a story with me about how he asked those five students what they felt they needed to make this school feel like their own. On the first day of school, he went through his visioning process and asked

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the students what their vision was. They responded by expressing that they wanted to get more students involved to have a sports team, they wanted jackets that had their new school logo on the back, and wanted their school logo to be the Lummi Blackhawks. We saw eight recurring themes through archival research and story-sharing sessions, which we presented as balances and imbalances. The most apparent theme that appeared was belonging. Other themes included Family and Community, Pedagogy, Culture, Self-Determination, Accessibility, Colonization, and Two-Worlds. 1.  Family and Community (Balance): Within archival data, we found an education plan from the 1970s that stated the need for a family-centered education system. There were references to community involvement and being reminded of the responsibility of the community as a whole. There was also a concept of intergenerational learning, which includes the whole family structure to be involved. 2.  Pedagogy (Balance): Within archival data, we found a strong desire to teach, organize, and learn in a Lummi style. Pedagogy represents a reclaiming of the classroom and an intergenerational learning system. 3.  Culture (Balance): Within archival data, a statement that the goal of Lummi education was to incorporate Lummi language, beliefs, and values. 4.  Self-Determination (Balance): Data calls for action to determine the standards and curriculum of education in our community. 5.  Accessibility (Imbalance): Past leaders wanted an education system for children on the reservation. They wanted to develop and support educational programs that helped children be prepared for life problems and opportunities. As stated in Lummi Indian Business Council resolution 90–20 “All Lummi students will be provided with a safe, caring, stimulation, positive learning environment that includes the proper space.” 6.  Colonization (Imbalance): Acknowledging a conflict between traditional and contemporary values when attending the public school system led to many factors, such as low attendance, racial conflict, and high dropout rates. Past leaders used colonization as a motivation to create a tribal school on the reservation where they could incorporate tribal values in hope of increasing attendance, ending racial conflict, and lowering the high dropout rate. 7.  Two-Worlds (Imbalance): The Lummi children were having to learn and adapt to different learning styles that conflict with tribal beliefs and values.

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We believed that balances plus imbalances equal belonging (Jones, Morris, & Grendon, 2018). If we could address the imbalances with solutions, we could help create belonging (Jones, Morris, & Grendon, 2018). It took me a long time to realize that it was more than just jackets and a school logo to those five students. But what the jackets represented was the students searching for a sense of belonging. They wanted someone to believe in them, listen to their wishes, and help them understand they were important. Since beginning my education journey, it has become clear that my Grandfather had a vision for the Lummi Nation School and what it could represent, and it has been my vision to keep his legacy alive. WHERE ARE WE CURRENTLY: EDUCATION CODE AND CULTURE AND LANGUAGE STANDARDS Several projects are currently taking place with the Lummi Nation to address these imbalances. One project the Lummi Nation has begun working on is implementing a Lummi Education Code, which is declared as the law and policy of Lummi Nation. This code states, “Lummi Nation will ensure self-determination and will be consistent and parallel with our cultural sovereignty, that shall protect our inherent rights, that it shall restore our original identity and language, and it shall use the guiding principles of Indigenousness and sovereignty.” (Lummi Education Code, 2020). The purpose of this code is to restore the original identity on which this nation was built, understanding that Lummi people have an inherent and treaty right that ensures education for our people and ensures education meets the needs of Indian students (Lummi Education Code, 2020). This code is crucial for our people because it allows us to define education on our terms and declare it the law of the land. It also defines who has power when distributing duties among stakeholders. It asserts that it’s our responsibility to oversee formal education on the reservation to improve our nation (Lummi Education Code, 2020). Our people understand the impacts of formal education and, therefore, state the “imprinting of our original tribal identity is critical for the survival of the Lummi Nation” (Lummi Education Code, 2020). Our community has also focused on creating culture and language standards for the Lummi Nation School which services grades K-12. The idea behind the language and culture is that the children are advancing every year. The Lummi Nation School is fortunate to have the ability to certify their language and culture teachers through the State of Washington in a governmentto-government agreement. I feel that the language and culture standards are in alignment with the purpose of meeting community standards. It gives

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examples of what we expect our students to know to deem them “successful.” Currently, Lummi Nation School is only in year one: they are implementing this program with the kindergarteners, and it will take eleven years to evaluate from start to finish. When the kindergartners entering these language and culture standards are seniors in high school, we will see if we were successful in this evaluation model and implementation. MOVING FORWARD:  ACHIEVING EDUCATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY After completing my masters, I felt as if I was left with more questions than answers. How do we continue to create belonging? Can the house of learning framework exist with the Lummi Nation School? What state and federal laws need changes to see this work through? In my doctoral journey, I shifted my focus to achieving educational sovereignty. In the text, Voices of Resistance and Renewal: Indigenous Leadership in Education, the definition of education sovereignty is “a people’s right to rebuild its demand to exist and present its gifts to the world” (Aguilera-Black Bear, 2014, 5). Educational sovereignty occurs when communities confront and challenge western educational structures by creating and implementing educational systems that embrace their values, beliefs, culture, and traditional knowledge (Aguilera-Black Bear, 2015, 5). In my first quarter, I was focused on looking at how we determined success within our Lummi Nation School. Who defines success at Lummi Nation School? How do we know when a child is “whole, complete?” I was inspired by a peer-reviewed article I read that stated the importance of developing an evaluation process that accommodates and values different “ways of knowing” within an Indigenous epistemology by taking ownership for defining success from the perspective of the community’s values and aspirations. (LaFrance, 2008). It must come from “an Indigenous point of view, the evaluator must have an understanding the self-determination that fuels the goals and aspirations of Indian communities to preserve, promote, and restore their culture.” (LaFrance, 2008). The reason is that Washington State currently sets the standards for the children at Lummi Nation School. Research has shown that state standardized testing “measures intelligence and general knowledge, but they are normed based on the knowledge and values of majority groups” (Kim & Zabelina, 2015, 129). This can create a bias based on gender, race, community status, and people with different language backgrounds, socioeconomic statute, and cultures (Kim & Zabelina, 2015, 129). My research then steered toward using our values to guide education, understanding that past leaders had the vision to help bridge this generation

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gap by centralizing language, culture, and history within the Lummi Nation School. From observation, I felt that the LNS teachers and administration all have different ideas about how to go about achieving this vision. So, how do we get everyone in our canoe to work together to centralize language, culture, and history? To successfully meet this goal, we need to identify Lummi values to guide Lummi Education so that everyone in our canoe, no matter what grade, no matter what age, is working toward the same outcomes. I was inspired by Shawn Wilson when he quoted an elder, “If it is possible to get every single person in a room thinking about the same thing for only two seconds, a miracle will happen” (Wilson, 2008, 69). From here, I moved more toward restoring belonging and what that looks like, looking more into pre-contact ways of teaching and learning by researching the house of learning that once existed. To restore the balance and create a strong decolonized education system, we need to return to the pre-contact teaching and learning methods and look at research questions, such as, “How do we use the education system as a tool to help restore tribal identity and create community? How do we assert our sovereignty and find community indicators of success? How do we create community mentorship to ensure our children feel complete and have a strong sense of belonging?” The idea of creating community by ensuring belonging came to me when I was thinking about our pre-contact ways of teaching and learning. Long ago, elders in the village observed the children’s growth and development from a young age to see what gifts they presented. When gifts were identified, the young people then devoted their whole life to mastering that gift under the guidance of a mentor. Mastering these gifts gave the children a sense of belonging and was the foundation of the community. Because of the mentorship within the community, no child was ever left behind, and everyone had a place within the community. Our children were taken care of, and our people felt whole. I believe the idea of helping children identify their gifts under the guidance of a mentor is a piece that is missing with LNS. Moving forward into my dissertation phase, the idea of educational sovereignty, creating community, belonging, and helping children identify their gifts will guide my research. INDIGENOUS LEADERSHIP:  TEACHINGS OF THE CANOE Throughout my journey, I have had to do a lot of self-reflection on leadership and my role within leadership. It made me reflect on Indigenous leadership and what makes a great leader. Now that I have acknowledged my education journey and the work I want to carry out, I want to look at what leadership

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skills are needed to carry this work out successfully. Do I possess the skills necessary to carry this work forward? I think back to my earliest leadership memory and what being a leader means to me. It brings me back to my childhood and remembering and having a collage on my bedroom wall of my late Grandfather’s pictures: above it was stated, “Wall of Fame.” The pictures included photos of my Grandfather and Bill Clinton, Gary Locke, and other politicians whose names I can no longer recall. My Grandfather served on our tribal council for as long as I can remember. He devoted his life to the Lummi people. It’s incredible that even at such a young age, I knew that my Grandfather had a gift for leading the people. I often think of what made my Grandfather a great leader. Upon much reflection, I think about how my Grandfather used the teachings of the canoe to guide him in his leadership journey. The teachings that he used to guide the youth he mentored were handed down to him from his Grandfather, taught to him by his Grandfather, and so on. He believed in getting the people in our community to work together toward a common goal. Many people from the outside see war canoe racing as a sport, but to us, it is a way of life. The teaching you learn from the canoe helps guide you through life. We believe that the canoe is alive, and it has a spirit. For the paddlers to get the canoe to move, all eleven paddlers must be one. Not only physically but spiritually. One heart, one mind, one paddle. We have a word for this “netse mot i sholwen,” one heart, one mind, in our language. Getting everyone to work hard and work together isn’t something that just happens quickly. You must lead by example. Your paddlers only work as hard as they see their leader working. There are times when you feel defeated and feel like giving up, but the canoe teaches you that you must be strong physically and mentally. Crossing the finish line doesn’t come without obstacles, and it isn’t an easy task, by any means. The canoe teaches you that anything is possible when you are connected mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically. I was asked about my leadership values and what guides our leadership philosophy in another class. I explained to my instructor about the canoe and the different roles within the canoe. As I get to the skipper seat, which is one of the most important seats of the canoe, I begin to become conflicted with who I want to put there. Am I ready to be the skipper of my canoe? I reflected upon this for a while. Being skipper of the canoe is teaching passed down from generation to generation in my family. My late Grandfather Willie Jones was an amazing skipper, and he taught my father William Jones Jr. everything he knew. In an interview with Wayne Morris, he stated, “Strategy is one key to being a good skipper. You must be able to read the water and visually see the tides

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and which direction the water is flowing.” For years, the skipper of a canoe has been dominantly a “man’s seat.” When I was 13 years old, I told my Dad I wanted to be a skipper. I was half-joking, maybe a little wishful. He said, “You are just as strong as the boys. You could do that easily.” He began to let me take my peers and steer the canoe. I immediately fell in love with that seat, as it was such an adrenaline rush. I can’t explain the feeling, but I felt like that was where I belonged, that’s where I felt connected, that is where I felt whole. The first time he let me skipper in a race, I took out the young girls in the canoe and was the only woman skipper out there. We raced alongside other canoes that had man skippers and battled all the way around. We came in second, but I won’t forget the look on the other canoers’ faces as they realized it was a girl skipper they were racing. As hard as it is to put myself in the skipper’s seat in my canoe, I must gain confidence in myself. I have been preparing for this my whole life. Since a young age, they have been teaching me what it takes to be a skipper and the teachings that come alongside. When I am conducting work, I always find myself using the canoe as a metaphor to help explain my connection because the canoe is everything. These are the teachings that help guide me in my leadership role. My Grandfather passed, but his teaching lives within me. I hope to continue to use the canoe’s teaching to help guide me on my journey into leadership. CONCLUDING THOUGHTS As I begin to think about my journey to renew my sense of belonging, I reflect on how I found my gifts, my place in the canoe, and the opportunities to make contributions to the community. I credit everything I am learning to those who took the time to share stories. Where would I be if I didn’t have a Grandfather who taught me the importance of believing and a Grandmother who taught me the importance of knowing who you are and where you come from. What would happen if I didn’t learn the teaching of the canoe and didn’t learn that it is possible to navigate rough waters? I think of the children in the community that may be less fortunate than me. I was blessed to have mentors in my life, and I want all our children to have that same support in their lives. To build a strong, culturally viable and sustainable community, we must work to guarantee the transmission of sacred knowledge. The pre-contact house of learning framework needs to be implemented within our K-12 systems so our children can learn their own place-based knowledge. A generational gap has interrupted the transmission of sacred knowledge. We can fill that gap by including language, culture, and history within everything we do and everything we teach. The family structure that once existed in pre-contact times has been broken by intergenerational

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trauma. We must start with building strong and caring children with strong self-identities who will then build a strong, healthy family. We cannot meet long-term goals with short-term fixes. We must be thinking seven generations ahead so that one day our grandchildren will not have to spend their lives healing from the impacts of intergenerational trauma. If this story leaves you with anything, I hope it assures you that dismantling the colonizing systems is possible—and that we are a part of that social justice movement. I hope you find what lights your fire just as I found what inspired me. There is a revolution to assert our sovereignty and take control of our own education. As stated by Christi Belcourt: Educators are in a position with a great deal of power to effect change. You literally have the future of this country in your hands, especially if you are teaching children. You must have the courage to disrupt the system for the sake of our children and our grand-children. You must rebuild, so schools cease being institutions and return to their natural state of bringing children to the land and providing mentorships to develop their gifts and be free thinkers. In this way, children will be able to find the solutions that we are not capable of due to our conditioning through colonization. (Tuck & Yang, 2018, 120)

I acknowledge much of the work shared in this chapter, I learned on my personal journey because someone took the time to share a piece of themselves with me. This is an important attribute of “being and belonging” to a community and our capacity to share place-based knowledge. You never know when the words you share may have an ever-lasting impact on the future. REFERENCES Aguilera-Black Bear, Dorothy, & John Tippeconnic. 2015. Voices of Resistance and Renewal: Indigenous Leadership in Education. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Derman-Sparks, Louise., & Carol Brunson. 1997. Teaching/learning Anti-Racism: a Developmental Approach. New York: Teachers College Press. Jones, M., B. Morris, & Grendon C. 2018. Reclaiming Lummi Education: Fulfilling the Vision of Our Old People. Unpublished Master’s Capstone, The Evergreen State College, Olympia, Washington. Kim, K. H., & D. Zabelina. 2015. “Cultural Bias in Assessment: Can Creativity Assessment Help?” International Journal of Critical Pedagogy, 6(2), 129–48. LaFrance, J., & R. Nichols. 2008. “Reframing Evaluation: Defining an Indigenous Evaluation Framework.” The Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation, 23(2), 13. Lummi Nation. (n.d.). Lummi Education Code (Draft) (Vol. Title 43). (2020).

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Tuck, Eve, and K. Wayne Yang. 2018. Toward What Justice?: Describing Diverse Dreams of Justice in Education. 1st ed. Vol. 1. Milton: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781351240932. Wilson, S. 2008. Research is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods. Black Point, Nova Scotia: Fernwood Publishing.

Chapter Ten

Restoring the Chehalis Story An Indigenous Approach to Reclaiming and Re-Centering a Tribal History Mary DuPuis

Throughout time, the resilient and vibrant strands of oral stories have intertwined to weave together the contemporary Chehalis story. In my family, the Howanus descendants of the Upper Chehalis, the traditional beginning of our family stories is, “A long time ago, when the Earth was young, and people and animals still lived and played together.” This beginning is an acknowledgement that our ways of knowing existed long before the white man stepped onto our shores. The purpose behind this narrative is to rediscover and reimagine the story of my Chehalis people as our ancestors would have shared their stories with their families. As Chehalis, we honor our Ancestors and our Elders by listening closely to their oral stories, which are our history, so we may pass these stories, and the knowledge they convey, on to our descendants. Because writing was not a common skill in the 1800s, illiteracy rates were high amid non-Indians and even higher among the Native population. Pacific Northwest tribes, among the last tribes to have regular interactions with non-Indian peoples, simply did not speak the English language, much less write it. Furthermore, the plethora of traders from many different nationalities working in the region, Germans, French, British, American, Russian, and Hawaiian, guaranteed the region did not have one dedicated foreign dialect for tribes to learn. The exposure to multiple languages made it hard to learn to write in any one language, especially in the early half of the nineteenth century when many of the foreigners were likely to have poor writing skills themselves. A trade language, known as the Chinook Jargon, was developed 113

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as a common language to make trade easier for all the native and foreign language speakers in the region. As a result, a tribal person, who spoke their primary tribal language and usually one or two languages of other tribes in the region, spoke the Chinook Jargon for trade purposes and perhaps some English, French, or other foreign languages as well. Tribal life in the eighteenth and nineteenth century was documented orally, through stories and social interaction. This method is still in use today, stories and social mores have been passed down through multiple generations, although now oral stories are sometimes written down by families who want to preserve their family histories. Pictures and recordings have also become commonly utilized platforms for recording tribal history, however, these methods have been most regularly used since the latter half of the twentieth century. Social media is a popular contemporary method for sharing histories, pictures, and recordings, to some extent supplanting the oral method for passing on knowledge. The understanding that Chehalis did not read or write, and the dependence on the written history of others, has resulted in an unintentional acceptance of the story presented to us as the history that represents us. This ideology has created a sense of complacency resulting in a failure to critically analyze Chehalis documents and stories. The hegemony, or authority, of the history was assumed to belong to the non-Indian and their historical narrative, when in fact, the power of the story has always resided within ourselves. CONTESTED HISTORY As an enrolled Chehalis Tribal member, I have heard the history of my people recounted by non-Chehalis people my entire life. These accounts are told by people who have placed themselves in a position of authority from which their perspectives have been accepted as the final truth on how Chehalis people came to exist as we do today. There are no Chehalis voices heard or presented in these stories. The Chehalis perspective is both a missing element and also, the vital ingredient necessary to either lend life, veracity, and meaning to these accounts, or to challenge their inaccuracy. Our tribal story needs to be learned by our children and grandchildren. Our story needs to be true to who we were and who we currently are. It should be an account not authored by colonizers. We must begin the shift away from the westernized portrayal of Chehalis history through re-examination of our experiences as they have been written by westernized researchers. To discern the true Chehalis history, the perspectives of westernized researchers and scholars must be removed from our stories. This is the process of decolonization as explained by renowned Maori scholar and writer Linda Tuhiwai Smith.

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Decolonization, according to Smith (2012), includes reworking our thinking to re-center ourselves and our identity as Indigenous people. Decolonization embraces the emancipation of Indigenous histories from the narrative of dominant cultures and encourages Indigenous people to share their own stories from their own perspectives. Decolonization is important to my work because I envision this narrative as the beginning of a dialogue within our Tribe about our individual and family stories, and the histories contained within those stories. Beginning this dialogue will encourage us to question the information we have believed to be true about Chehalis Tribal history and rediscover for ourselves our own family stories and historical narratives. The Chehalis story must be reclaimed and released from the boundaries in which it is currently held by the non-Indigenous story. By reclaiming our story, we are celebrating our survival and ability to persevere despite the hardships our Ancestors faced so that we, their descendants, might live on and share the story of the Chehalis as our Ancestors would have told it. WESTERNIZED HISTORY VS. CHEHALIS HISTORY Westernized theories of recorded histories have traditionally established patriarchal and hierarchical systems of assigning value and legitimacy to historical narratives. These systems include identifying literacy, power, and domination as necessary components that create histories which represent marginalized societies and peoples and conquest as insignificant to the dominant historical narrative. As a result of that creation, marginalized societies are either misrepresented in the annals of history by the dominant society or have been completely removed from the narrative altogether (Smith 2012, 37). In Decolonizing Methodologies (2012, 36), Linda Tuhiwai Smith argues for the rejection of the historical narrative as a linear, one perspective, one story narrative detailing the exploits of a dominant culture. She advocates for “transforming our colonized views of our own history (as written by the West)” (2012, 36) arguing that this transformation includes a critical analysis of the westernized portrayal of our culture and histories. Transformation also requires the reengagement of ourselves with our story through an examination of our own ways of knowing, our own perspective of history and shared experiences. Through reexamination and imagination, we can shift the center of ideology toward the Indigenous histories and epistemologies that represent our worldview (Smith 2012, 37). While Indigenous communities have utilized knowledge gleaned from westernized information systems to support and strengthen the needs of Native populations (by providing part of the framework for self-determination and self-governance), the philosophies and theories of ancestral histories and

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culture is the foundation of tribal communities (Brayboy 2006, 437). This foundation not only underpins the values and beliefs of the community and culture, it is also the platform from which we examine and critique the colonization of our communities (Brayboy 2006, 437). The resulting critique recognizes the roles racism and colonization have played in Indigenous education and theory. Tribal Critical Race Theory, or Tribalcrit as Dr. Bryan Brayboy named it (2006), acknowledges the fluidity of the strands of Indigenous histories and epistemologies and addresses how they intersect with the strands of westernized schooling and methods of survival. That is to say, the strands intersect as individual threads, the strands do not become the other, they do not assimilate into a single strand, but they influence each other. Tribalcrit values the underlying theories and philosophies inherent in Indigenous stories and histories, and also acknowledges that westernized knowledge can intersect and connect with Indigenous knowledge bases by providing support for social justice and tribal self-governance (Brayboy 2006, 427). Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2012) also addresses the intersection of the strands of history and introspection (Smith 2012, 23–24) and demands that we have an analysis of how we were colonized, of what that has meant in terms of our immediate past and what it means for our present and future. However, the lens from which we view history is biased and influenced not only by the perspective of the historian, but also the social constructs governing the period in which the historian is living. Sociologist C. Wright Mills (2000) defined the subjective nature of history, “The historian represents the organized memory of mankind, and that memory, as written history, is enormously malleable. It changes, often drastically, from one generation of historians to another—and not merely because more detailed research later introduces new facts and documents into the record. It changes also because of changes in the points of interest and the current framework within which the record is built” (144–45). Smith further adds that although the two strands intersect, “what is particularly significant in Indigenous discourses is that solutions are posed from a combination of the time before, colonized time, and the time before that, pre-colonized time because decolonization encapsulates both sets of ideas” (Smith 2012, 25). Thus, to understand what has happened to us as Indigenous peoples, we must also understand how we have arrived at where we are. THE CHEHALIS TRIBE The Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation (Chehalis Tribe) is a federally recognized Native American Indian Tribe located in the upper northwest corner of rural western Washington State in the United States, and south of the state capitol of Olympia. The Tribe is situated in the Chehalis

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River watershed which ranges from the Cascade Mountains west to the Pacific Ocean. The colonization of the Chehalis story is evident in the voice of the various storytellers: the American settler, the Canadian trader, the ethnologists and anthropologists, all of whom inserted themselves into the lives of the Chehalis people and then recorded the interactions through the lens of their own experience and observations. This is an example of Mills (2000) subjective nature of history: the bias of the storyteller defined the nature of our story. The colonizer’s view became an intersection of the strands of our story, and this strand, as Smith (2012) and Brayboy (2006) have stated, is a strand we must seek to understand because it has influenced how our story has been told. This is not a complete rejection of the influence of the colonizer on Chehalis history. It is, however, an acknowledgment that our story has been influenced by the colonizer. Rather than completely reject their interwoven strand, we must critically analyze the information it contributes and determine for ourselves how we will position the data within our own research. For Chehalis, the appropriation of the Chehalis story began immediately upon contact with non-Indigenous peoples, when our very names were changed from individual village names, family names, or place names to the homogenous Chehalis, which was actually the name of the first village of contact along what is known as Grays Harbor, Washington. Tribes, who were once autonomous independent nations were now collectively known as the Upper or Lower Chehalis peoples. Albeit intermarriage between tribes had always existed, sovereign tribal identities were maintained and a unified tribal council was only implemented when necessary (for example, in times of war). From the point of contact forward, the Chehalis story (the first strand) was published in diaries, reports to foreign governments, and other publications by non-Indigenous peoples. Thus began the commodification and objectification of the Chehalis experience—the naming of our people, knowledge, and culture, and the claiming of our lands. Chehalis, who were not writing or reading pre-contact to the mid to late 1800s, possibly had little to no knowledge of how their stories were shared or how they were represented in reports published a whole continent or ocean away. In the Chehalis Indigenous world, knowledge was passed down throughout the course of the day, as daily chores were completed, through narrative storytelling, during times of travel, and around the fire during the long winter months. In fact, the very act of living required knowledge of hunting, fishing, and gathering to be passed on as stories throughout the families because it was integral to their very survival. This method ensured survival because one’s survival could be threatened with a bad storm or a poorly stocked winter larder.

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Eventually, the massive influx of white settlers into the traditional areas of the Chehalis River tribes pushed the tribes onto a small plot of reservation land and their individual identities were incorporated into one: The Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation. This move was for the convenience of the colonizers to expedite the colonization process. The effects of colonization, having already upset the natural order of traditional tribal culture, became more pronounced once the tribal people moved onto the reservation. There, an Indian agent was assigned to oversee the building of a school and western style homes, and the use of English as the primary language. The purpose of these practices was to abolish Chehalis ceremonies, beliefs, and values and to ensure the tribal people transitioned from a seasonally nomadic existence to a reservation based, westernized, agrarian one. Rather than being separated by forests and rivers, the various village sites of the Chehalis were required to consolidate in one location and establish a government that enabled equal representation of all the bands of the Chehalis. The resulting Chehalis Reservation is in the Puget Sound region of western Washington, USA. The land ceded for the Chehalis Reservation was originally one of several villages occupied by the Upper Chehalis Indians. Three executive orders signed by the president of the United States on July 8, 1864; October 1, 1886; and November 11, 1909, established the boundaries of the reservation (Wright, Mitchell, Schmidt, & Beal 1960, 72). The oral stories that had instructed the tribes on how to live as Chehalis began to recede, while the new, unfamiliar westernized method of survival developed. Such survival method was based on farming and use of goods and services supplied by the federal government. It also led to a firm foothold of colonization of the Chehalis people. As the years passed and the era of the Indian agent came to an end, the Tribe was faced with a bleak economic future. Farming had never become the successful venture the government agents had hoped it would and the remoteness of the reservation made travel to urban areas for living wage jobs a hardship many could not overcome. Ethnologists continued to visit the reservation and conduct research projects on the Chehalis people. One, Katherine Van Winkle Palmer, published a book of Chehalis stories, Honne, The Spirit of the Chehalis (1925), without compensating or properly acknowledging the family from whom she took the stories. Others, such as researcher Thelma Adamson, produced research notes that incorporated some cultural aspects of the Chehalis people with those of other tribal people, some of whom lived far outside the geographic area of the Chehalis Reservation. This created a narrative of the Chehalis story that failed to accurately represent Chehalis but which also became the foundation for other research projects and books, further distorting the true Chehalis story. Unfortunately, cultural artifacts were not exempt from this negligence. Today many museums still hold artifacts

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that are distinctly Chehalis but have been attributed to other tribal groups due to faulty record keeping and research. The disastrous effect of all of this is a tribal history that has been embraced as the Chehalis story but is truly only a small part of the whole picture. Chehalis people, living a tenuous, economically fragile existence during the early half of the twentieth century, were most likely concerned with basic survival and again, may not have been aware of how their story was presented to non-tribal people in museums, universities, and governments. Eventually, as the century progressed, an awareness of the abuse and misuse of our story developed. This awareness caused the Tribe to become more cautious of how our story was shared. Tribal responses to this awareness resulted in attempts to regain control of our image by developing tribally generated pamphlets and reports. However, due to the westernized, institutional habit of basing written materials on published research, many of the resources the Tribe utilized for the development of our own informational materials was grounded in a history written by the colonizers. Even today, Thelma Adamson’s research is cited extensively by the Chehalis and other area tribes, so much so that one tribe has attempted to utilize the information as a means of moving far from their traditional fishing grounds and into traditional Chehalis Tribal fishing areas. Critical analysis of Adamson’s research, however, identifies some inconsistencies in her work, most notably, misidentifying tribally specific cultural mores and customs, such as, accounts of Chehalis Tribal traditions that were incorrectly attributed to early, post-contact Chehalis. For example, by the 1920s, when Adamson was conducting her interviews, the availability of guns had made larger animals such as elk and deer easier to hunt. This meant leather and tanned animal hides were more likely to be processed by Chehalis Tribal members rather than traded for from other tribes. Adamson’s notes give the impression leather and hides were a common element of Chehalis culture, when research shows prior to the introduction of guns and ammunition, large game such as deer and elk were not likely to be hunted because Chehalis did not possess weapons of the caliber needed for hunting animals of that size. Unfortunately, subsequent researchers incorporated this misinformation into their own research and a new, skewed tribal history was born. MISSING VOICES AND THE PASSING OF KNOWLEDGE The necessity of sharing stories for survival has passed. People have the ability to shop for food at the local grocery store, and purchase clothing for warmth. While fishing, berry picking, hunting, and other sustenance pursuits

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are still practiced and contribute toward tribal diets, most people do not rely solely on traditional foods for their nutrition. Some families continue to share stories within the family unit, but our oral history has been replaced by published material. Chehalis does not have an exhaustive library dedicated to Chehalis history, although there are some books and research materials available which are the basis for many of today’s high school research projects or college papers. Unfortunately, information accessed in this manner is necessarily missing the Chehalis voice because the source of these texts, are non-tribal: they have been written from the perspective of the non-Indian studying the Chehalis Tribal people, and then interpreting their results through the lens of their non-Indian experience. The easiest method for incorporating the Chehalis story from a Chehalis perspective would be to rely on Elders, tribal documents, and other tribal resources. For as Maori scholar, Dr. Timoti Karetu (2002) says, we must ask ourselves, “Do we have the right to deprive generations yet unborn of the rich, cultural legacy to which they are heir? We, too, could well have been a deprived generation if it had not been for each of us here assembled, and we know how our own lives have been enriched because of our having access to that rich cultural and linguistic heritage bequeathed to us by our Ancestors” (29). Do we, as Chehalis people, have the right to deprive our future generations of the stories of their Indigenous history and culture? The answer would appear to be no because we want our descendants to know their story, and that story includes the impact of colonization and the misinterpretation of our knowledge. We do not want today to be the end of a millennia of Chehalis history. We want our story to carry on throughout all our generations, and the contribution of this thesis is another facet of that story. Nevertheless, this is not as easy a solution as it would seem. During a casual conversation with another Tribal member, the person I was speaking with mentioned they would not pass on any of the historical or cultural information that had been shared with them through the generations (by their grandparents and parents), to their own children, grandchildren, or anyone for that matter. This person felt there was not anyone worthy of sharing the information with, including every member of their family. This sentiment has haunted me as I have moved forward with my own research into the history of the Chehalis Tribe. What are the implications of this perspective and attitude of withholding cultural information and history from our tribal children? How will knowledge be passed down throughout the generations if we withhold traditions, oral histories and stories, or language from our children? Are we capturing our culture to retain and share information with the generations that follow ours? What is the point of capturing our culture to keep the information locked up, as if knowledge is a precious jewel to be hidden from view and banked in a vault, secreted from the world?

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The consequence of withholding this information is a cultural death. When the holders of our knowledge pass away, our cultural history will no longer be alive or available for future Tribal members, and we will not be able to get a true or accurate representation of our cultural identity. My father, Curtis DuPuis, shared a story of how funeral services used to be when he was young. I asked him why they were so different from today and he said because eventually people stopped putting out the items needed for a funeral and ultimately the Tribe reached an age where the younger people never knew those items even existed. As generations pass, so will our cultural traditions, ceremonies, and values unless we begin sharing our stories and preserving our histories, perhaps reviving past customs and practices. It is actually our stories that hold the information about Chehalis. The Chehalis story is unique. We have our own language, distinct from the languages of the regional tribes adjacent to us, we are an executive order tribe and not a treaty tribe, and our story includes elements woven from the stories of the tribes who have been incorporated onto the reservation with us. If Chehalis continues to allow others to control our stories, if we choose to lock up our stories within, we give up the ability to control the story that is told about us. If we want to pass on our story to our children, we have to rely on our oral history from the perspective of our people. The alternative means we will depend solely on the perception of non-Chehalis people. Although there are people sympathetic to the lifestyle of the Chehalis, their perceptions and understandings of Chehalis are still viewed through the lens of their own non-Indigenous, and non-Chehalis history and experience. Thus, even sympathetic viewpoints remain skewed. As discussed previously, sociologist C. Wright Mills (2000) would posit it is impossible for an outsider to fully embrace the cultural implications, the worldview, and the very essence of what it means to be Chehalis. This is the strand of the story, as written by the colonizer, that we have incorporated to this point, but we will find it is still impossible for an outsider to tell our story from a fully unbiased, decolonized standpoint. We must therefore rely on our Elders, our traditional ways of knowing, and oral accounts as insiders to tell our stories. As acclaimed historian, professor, and author Vine Deloria, Jr. (1991/1994) said, “education in the traditional settings occurs by example and not as a process of indoctrination. That is to say, Elders are the best living examples of what the end product of education and life experiences should be” (23). REVISIT, REINTERPRET, REIMAGINE The written accounts of Chehalis sanctioned in historical documents distorted our ways of knowing by excluding us, exterminating us and conquering us

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while validating the colonist and their points of view. Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2012), for example, describes the westernized approach to recording history of Indigenous peoples as a “historical descent into a state of nothingness and hopelessness” (91). For Chehalis, this is how some researchers have recorded our experience. The website of National Geographic, a well-known publication of the National Geographic Society that regularly focuses on Indigenous peoples from around the world, once wrote in a description of the Chehalis Tribe on its website, that in the 1800s the Chehalis Tribe was a tribe in decline and the remaining Chehalis people merged with the Quinault Tribe on the Quinault Reservation in Washington State (National Geographic, n.d.). It is true that some Chehalis do reside on the Quinault Reservation, however, the website failed to recognize Chehalis as a federally recognized Tribe within its own right. If someone were to research the Chehalis Tribe, and they entered this term into an internet search bar, it is highly likely the National Geographic website would appear as a selection for research. The layman, unfamiliar with the Chehalis Tribe, would assume National Geographic, as a known research publication, was correct, and the Chehalis Tribe itself was no longer in existence and its descendants had merged with the Quinault Tribe. This is information in the world of knowledge, presented as factually accurate information on the Chehalis Tribe; but it is not only faulty, it is untrue. To have any impact in combating misinformation, the Chehalis Tribe must take a stand and provide accurate information. We can no longer afford to stand by and allow our story to be told by other, non-Chehalis people. By continuing to do so, we are doing not only a disservice to ourselves and our children, we are allowing this misrepresentation to become our legacy. In his book, A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn (2005) wrote of challenging orthodox histories and the partisan perspectives from which they are written, “But there is no thing as a pure fact, innocent of interpretation. Behind every fact presented to the world—by a teacher, a writer, anyone—is a judgement. The judgment that has been made is that this fact is important, and that other facts, omitted, are not important. . . . The consequences of those omissions has been not simply to give a distorted view of the past but, more important, to mislead us all about the present” (684). Zinn’s revisionist approach examines conventional historical accounts and challenges, reinterprets, and reimagines the story from the viewpoint of multicultural participants. Zinn’s approach to the historical narrative encompasses multiple perspectives and recognizes that historical events are not experienced one way by all people, but multiple ways by all people. He notes that not every experience is a fond memory of inclusion and acceptance, for many the experience was one of subjugation and marginalization.

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James Loewen, sociologist and author of Lies My Teacher Told Me, Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong (2007), also takes a revisionist approach to the historical narrative. Loewen (2007) affirms that it is not one person’s responsibility to revisit and reimagine the historical narrative, it is everyone’s responsibility to challenge orthodox historical narratives. By implementing Zinn and Loewen’s approaches to revisionist history, (a multi-person, multi-challenge, multi-perspective approach), Indigenous Chehalis researchers benefit not only from challenging westernized research methodologies, but profit from challenging the one Chehalis story perspective and revisiting the multiple threads of Chehalis Tribal history and the tribes that have been confederated with Chehalis. This is the knowledge we pass on to our future generations, the cultural legacy that will prevent future generations from being deprived of their ancestral knowledge (Karetu 2002, 29). Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2012) describes the Indigenous approach to research as one of “hope and optimism” (91) tied to the story of “contact, invasion, genocide, resistance, survival and recovery” (91). This approach, she notes, is discounted by westernized research as too idealistic. Indigenous researchers cannot look to westernized research to validate our research methodologies, we must critically engage with history and challenge the anthropological view. To allow other researchers to designate our validity as researchers is to continue to allow the colonization of our existence as Indigenous peoples. Indigenous peoples have been researchers since time immemorial. Our research methods are what enabled our people to learn how to live and survive in the environments in which our Ancestors existed. Indigenous researchers are contributing to the wider body of Indigenous knowledge as our forebears have done before us. The dichotomy, between western and Indigenous methodologies enables the westernized researcher to control the portrayal and outcome of the story through a perspective of their choosing. Often this perspective is one of conquering and reshaping Indigenous cultures into an identity that mirrors the colonizer. Indigenous peoples, on the other hand, live the experience of colonization and marginalization. Ours is a story of survival, against attempts to destroy the essence of who we are. This view is not idealistic, it is not simplistic, and it is bittersweet and poignant. DECOLONIZATION AND INDIGENOUS RESEARCH PARADIGMS It is integral to our moving forward that we, as Chehalis, give voice to our own experiences and understandings of who we are and what is important

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for us. We must take a decolonizing position by centering the focus of our research on our Chehalis experience from a Chehalis perspective. One approach is to reframe Chehalis tribal history drawing from Dr. Bagele Chilisa’s example of an Indigenous Research Paradigm, which embraces the validity of Indigenous knowledge systems and their role in decolonizing Indigenous histories (Chilisa 2012, 40). The ontology of Chilisa’s Paradigm recognizes the Indigenous knowledge system is relational and Indigenous societies embraced a system in which societies were informed by their environment, each other, the people who had gone before and the universe. This interconnected relationship in Indigenous research has been in place “a long time ago since the earth was young,” from the days when the people learned to eat oysters by observing the birds cracking the shells on the beach or when they watched the animals eat berries and learned to identify the poisonous berries by noting which berries the animals avoided eating. Chilisa (2012, 14) defines decolonization as the process of removing the colonized, oppressive, paternal research paradigms that western societies and research methodologies have placed to marginalize Indigenous knowledge systems. The aim is to develop traditional, culturally appropriate, Indigenous research paradigms in the field of research and academia. “Decolonization,” as argued by Smith (2012), does not mean and has not meant a total rejection of all theory or research or Western knowledge. Rather, it is about centering our concerns and world views and then coming to know and understand theory and research from our own perspectives and for our own purposes. (41)

Decolonization of the Chehalis story would at one level remove the layers of westernized theories (that have previously defined our story) that at another level, would enable revitalization, the rebirths, and ways to reclaim Chehalis ways of knowing. The means to achieve that is to develop a research methodology that is uniquely Chehalis. THE RELEVANCE OF KAUPAPA MAORI METHODOLOGY To develop our own Chehalis based methodology we need to look toward those who have gone before us into the field of Indigenous research paradigms utilizing their experiences and their knowledge in our own struggles for self-determination. This section on Kaupapa Maori Methodology recognizes that Kaupapa Maori has synergies with other Indigenous ways of viewing the world and is useful in helping to portray a Chehalis methodology.

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Smith (2012) identifies five dimensions that have framed the struggle for decolonization within Indigenous research methodologies. In referring specifically to Maori, she argues for: 1.  Critical Consciousness: An awakening from the slumber of hegemony, and the realization that action has to occur. 2.  Reimagining the world and our position as Maori within the world: fueling the dreams of alternative possibilities. 3.  Ways in which different ideas, social categories and tendencies intersect: the coming together of disparate ideas, the events, the historical moment. 4.  Movement or disturbance: the unstable movements that occur when the status quo is disturbed. 5.  Concept of Structure: the underlying code of imperialism and power relations. (187) According to Smith (2012), “Kaupapa Maori has provided important insights about how transformation works and can be made to work for Indigenous communities” (200). Kaupapa Maori is a methodology. It is specific to Maori people, but its development and implementation can be used as a learning model for other Indigenous communities in developing their own, culturally specific, research methodology for implementation within their Indigenous community. Smith (2012) acknowledges that Indigenous researchers may face their own internal battle as they seek to decolonize their minds and begin to understand the validity of Indigenous knowledge and its contribution to “the unique body of world knowledge” (223) and its significant contributions to the world of academia. Incorporating Smith’s (2012, 201) five dimensions of decolonization into a Chehalis methodology would give us the opportunity to reimagine, rethink, re-examine, revisit, and revise how Chehalis is presented, and not take for granted dominant western perspectives. Kaupapa Maori demonstrates how Chehalis methodologies can challenge existing paradigms of Chehalis history and embrace Indigenous based research methods. This is especially applicable to Chehalis histories written previously, precisely because they were written following accepted research protocols established according to western academics. Research perspectives have utilized western frameworks for research. Deloria (1997, 29) describes the research community as populated by scientists and researchers who form a close-knit network of individuals who do not value a research approach dissimilar from the paradigms which they have established. Deloria (1997, 29) further argues that the westernized research community supports and advocates for theories and philosophies

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which follow the guidelines they have established regardless of if the research was conducted or presented in a truthful and unbiased manner. Even though Indigenous people have been observing and implementing the outcomes of their Indigenous research for centuries, their research methods are not recognized as valid by the westernized research community (Deloria 1997, 34). Deloria (1997, 35) makes a strong argument for the difference in how non-Indigenous research methods and Indigenous research methods are held to very different standards of validity within the research community. Unfortunately, despite observation of their environment and the application of knowledge within their communities, Indigenous researchers are often not given credit for their contributions to science because their research is not conducted according to the accepted research guidelines of the westernized research community. As researchers, we need to be aware of the challenges and issues that western research has placed on Indigenous communities. Our story is not a single narrative nor a shared experience, and we do not require validation from other research academies to conduct research within our Indigenous communities. We can create our own methodologies/methods (Smith, 2012) to validate our own ways of knowing. Kaupapa Maori rejects the accepted western research “as the only valid form of research” assumption (Johnston 1998) and instead, posits that western methods must be analyzed for appropriateness in Indigenous research models. Indigenous research models are important for projects concerning Indigenous people. This is Smith’s (2012) dimension, the awakening of Critical Consciousness, the realization that we have embraced and integrated the dominant research paradigm into our histories and the presentation of ourselves. Indigenous peoples have not critically analyzed the story we present to the world, and we have allowed ourselves to fall into a false identity as a result. This awakening is also known as hegemony, which scholar Antonio Gramsci (Simon 1990) identified as the emerging awareness that we have incorporated the standards of the dominant society into our own culture. We must now reposition ourselves and our approaches to research and to reflect our Indigenous worldview. Kaupapa Maori is further a concept of interconnectedness, respect, acceptance of the research project by the community (prior to initiating a research project), the removal of the hierarchy, the acknowledgment of equality, and the culturally appropriate and culturally informed understanding of research outcomes. Graham Smith (2012) defines Kaupapa Maori research parameters as: 1.  Related to “being Maori.” 2.  Is connected to Maori philosophy and principles.

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3.  Takes for granted the validity and legitimacy of Maori, the importance of Maori language and culture; and 4.  Is concerned with the struggle for autonomy over our own [Maori] cultural well-being. (187) Kaupapa Maori methodology strives to create a research environment in which Maori scholars are the primary researchers in research that addresses or seeks to understand Maori foci. Occasionally, non-Maori researchers may obtain permission to collaborate with Maori scholars on a research project, however, the non-Maori researcher must first obtain explicit permission to do so from the Maori community they will be working in (Smith 2012, 186). Kaupapa Maori methodology is a marked paradigm shift away from a positivist methodology. Positivism could be considered a standardized western methodology in which the researcher is an observer, a separate and distinct entity from the research whose outcomes are filtered through the lens of their own life experience rather than the research subject. Kaupapa Maori methodology acknowledges the life experience and culture of Maori as essential for research projects in Maori communities. The non-Maori observer’s filter is inconsequential and irrelevant because Maori are scholars in their own right and capable of defining their own research questions and outcomes. As Maori researchers like Smith (2012), Johnston (1998), and others have argued being Maori is essential to Kaupapa Maori research, for how can one truly understand the social and unspoken mores of a culture unless they themselves are Indigenous to the culture? However, simply being Maori does not automatically mean one can engage in Kaupapa Maori research. Kaupapa Maori methodology also requires a commitment to community and family that might mean defining the research parameters but to also determine if the project itself is beneficial to the community. Dr. Kathy Irwin (1994) for example, “characterizes Kaupapa Maori as research that is ‘culturally safe’; that involves the ‘mentorship’ of Elders; that is culturally relevant and appropriate while satisfying the rigour of research” (Smith 2012, 186). Kaupapa Maori research methods reclaim identity and enable self-determination in how research will be conducted within their communities. Tuakana Nepe (1991) argues, for instance, that “Kaupapa Maori is derived from very different epistemological and metaphysical foundation and it is these that give Kaupapa Maori its distinctiveness from western philosophies” (Smith 2012, 189). Western research tends to place those that are researched in a position of Other, the researcher being seen as the holder of knowledge, and the researched as the less than or Othered. In Indigenous terms, however, conducting research does not mean the researcher is automatically granted a position of power over the research subject.

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Unfortunately, western research methodologies tend to create the boundary between researcher and the researched, the intent behind the separation is to create clean unbiased results, thereby encouraging the false sense of superiority because researchers are not expected to engage on a personal level with the people they are researching. Westernized methodologies train researchers to silence and limit Indigenous researchers from having a voice in their research by establishing parameters that remove Indigenous researchers from the research. This approach suggests Indigenous researchers cannot conduct valid research within their Indigenous communities because they are too close to the research, when in fact, Indigenous researchers are the most appropriate researcher for their Indigenous communities because they possess the cultural knowledge necessary to conduct research within their respective communities. UNFRAMING THE PARAMETERS CONFINING A CHEHALIS METHODOLOGY Dr. Shawn Wilson, an Opaskwayak Cree from Manitoba, Canada, supports the development of Indigenous methodologies in his book Research is Ceremony, Indigenous Research Methods. Wilson (2008, 11) rejects the idea of an Indigenous research methodology based on established western research theories. He encourages Indigenous researchers to develop their own methodologies based on their personal experiences. He recognizes that while Indigenous communities throughout the world may have similarities in their shared experience as Indigenous people, their communities have distinctly individual cultural practices. As a result, there is not one answer or method to conducting research within an Indigenous community, but generic methods are driven by the context, therefore, each community must develop its own methods and guidelines for who is allowed to conduct research and what research methods will be utilized. In reading Smith (2012) and Wilson’s (2008) work, my thinking about my research has been stimulated to think toward research as a Chehalis Tribal member. Up to this point, my work has been slowly evolving from a definite western research paradigm but as I am challenged to think as an Indigenous person, I am moving toward an Indigenous research paradigm. I am learning to become more fluid in my thinking, I am learning that simply being Chehalis does not mean my work is automatically Indigenous because while my center, my being is Chehalis, my thinking about acceptable forms of research has not been from a Chehalis or Indigenous point of view. Dr. Lynn Lavallee for example, author of Practical Application of an Indigenous Research Framework and Two Qualitative Indigenous Research

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Methods: Sharing Circles and Anishnaabe Symbol-Based Reflection (2009) has also struggled to use the cultural knowledge she has learned from her Indigenous community to work within the community. The challenge has been of conducting her research without trying to force the fluidity of that knowledge into the square box that seems to accompany most Western research methods. Lavallee also recognizes this issue in her own research, when she says, “The most important lesson I learned from my experience of working from an Indigenous research framework within the academy was how the rules of the academy and of research do not always allow an Indigenous framework to flourish” (2009, 36). After reading Lavalee’s work, I realized I spent too many years thinking of research from a non-Indigenous perspective and not enough years thinking of research from an Indigenous one. This was surprising to me because I grew up in a traditional family and on a reservation. Being Chehalis is what I know: it is my identity. However, I, too, have needed to be decolonized. While some of the non-Indigenous perspective presented in these materials is obviously biased (and not in a good way, toward Chehalis) much of it did have value. A few of the non-Indigenous researchers that participated in research on Chehalis people became good friends of Chehalis and are still remembered in a friendly, pleasant manner. Basically, the difference in our research is how we define our methodology and interpret the results. The root of their observation is not necessarily wrong: it is their own biases and interpretation of the information that they have projected into the observation that infuses the inaccuracy. For example, according to sociologist Dr. C. Wright Mills (2000), historical research cannot be limited to one, usually westernized perspective due to the expectation of homogeneity among cultures. As Mills (2000) says, “To understand and to explain the comparative facts as they lie before you today, you must know the historical phrases and the historical reasons for varying rates and varying directions of development and lack of development” (151). The western research methods that have been applied to Chehalis Tribal research then have failed to account for the nuances in working with Chehalis people. There is meaning behind every action, there is reasoning behind who is performing the action and there is understanding in the people observing the action, which outsiders miss in their research. This is not a skill set one learns in a methodology or methods paper or by engaging with an Indigenous community: this is a skill set one learns over a lifetime. We need to re-examine our understanding of what it means to undertake Chehalis research, or as Smith (2012, 201) would say, reimagine the world and our position within the world.

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A CHEHALIS BASKET METHODOLOGY— THE WEAVES OF HISTORY The story of the Chehalis people is like the Chehalis basket that our tribe is well known for producing. It is this analogy of a basket that Dr. Marla Conwell (2018), Chehalis Tribal Member, used as a methodology in her doctoral thesis when she spoke of language revitalization for the Chehalis Tribe. Our stories can be likened to a basket, because they are made up of structures comprised of multi-layered, interwoven perspectives that can be drawn from a range of focus that Conwell (2018) examined specifically in relation to language. I am going to develop that analogy of a basket further in this narrative of research and Indigenous histories. There are two levels of analysis regarding my Chehalis basket that need to be noted. The first relates to broader historical research. In examining history, Chehalis research needs to consider the whole basket rather than just a single weave. That is because each weave contributes to producing a very different basket, and although this narrative recommends re-examining the individual weaves of our basket, we must be mindful that the prominence of one weave over another, does produce significantly different results. We need to examine, for example, how the weaves of history were woven together and when examining research evidence, ask the following question: what do the intersections mean? What do these weaves represent and how does the way in which our history is constructed impact what we know of who we are today? This is the multi-person, multi-challenge, multi-perspective research approach that Zinn (2005) and Loewen (2007) refer to. In the weaving of the basket, we must be mindful that each strand of material represents a tribe, a village, a family, a story. If we are to trace back our basket, we break down our weaves to the individual strands and we consider how the stories tie together, where do events intersect and where do we as people intersect? However, this re-examination of our basket will cause, as Smith (2012, 201) says, an unstable movement when the status quo is disturbed. Firstly, that re-examination will disturb the “accepted” documented record of Chehalis history, the “official version” of historical events as outlined previously. Secondly, the Chehalis story is not homogenous. We were not one people who moved together and made decisions together and lived happily as one as history tends to portray us. We were distinct tribes and villages and, if we truly examine our story, we will find that our story is not a smooth strand, or a smooth weave. It is not even perfect because the tribes we are descended from did not always get along. When we look at history through the lens of today, we tend to think of the past as a time when everyone lived a simpler life, or worked together better, but this, we will find, is a fallacy.

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THE WEAVES OF METHODOLOGY AND METHOD The second level of analysis regarding my Chehalis basket relates explicitly to methodologies and methods. Kaupapa Maori methodologies in informing our own Chehalis methodologies tell us that the insider approach in Indigenous research methods is the most valid. Conwell (2018) for example, when speaking on Chehalis language revitalization, has said, “Any progress derived outside the Chehalis community will necessarily miss the mark because the insider status of the researcher is a necessary element. Indigenous language models using foreign frameworks do not engender culturally relevant outcomes, resulting in awkward and uneven language patterns” (Conwell 2018, 22). This also holds true for Chehalis Tribal historians and researchers conducting research on tribal histories. Western research methods (with their controlled, planned, and timed approach intended to codify and measure the data) cannot do so within Indigenous communities because their methods (among other things) are out of sync with how our communities operate. THE ELABORATE/RESTRICTED WEAVE OF THE RESEARCHER AS INSIDER/OUTSIDER Researchers who are not from within a community, will equally struggle to interpret the data they gather because they do not have the code/key to do so. In Class, Codes, and Control: Theoretical Studies Towards a Sociology of Language for example, Dr. Basil Bernstein (1971) refers to two codes: a restricted code, which is juxtaposed against a second, the elaborate code. Johnston (1998), in giving examples of the restricted and elaborate code, argues that the restricted code enables choices against a set number of options, whereas the elaborate code is limitless in possible options. For example, language that is restrictive in use, is governed by responses to questions or regulated by protocol. Language interactions in this respect will be limited (restricted) to set interactions. For those utilizing a restricted code, being asked a question like “what is the weather like today,” would result in responses like fine, wet, and so on. The latter code (elaborate) however, is quite the opposite. The language exchanges are not regulated but instead can result in eloquent language, which covers a range of unpredictable alternatives. In building on the previous example of the weather, responses might be something like, “At the moment, the weather is holding but I suspect that due to the lingering precipitation, it is highly likely to rain this afternoon.” If we apply the ideas behind Bernstein’s (1971) restricted and elaborate codes to research, then what that means is that researchers will operate

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with either a restricted or elaborate code when it comes to observing and interpreting information. I posit here that the elaborate code is an “insiders” code because being able to put meaning to what researchers uncover in their research requires more than just observational skills. Researchers need to have the elaborate code to make sense of the nuances to understand and interpret the data correctly. Otherwise, the lens to view the information is culturally based, meaning that the researcher needs to come from inside the researched group (in this case, Chehalis) to put meaning to what they hear and see. Equally, I posit that the restricted code is an outsider’s code because outsiders do not have the necessary cultural lens to interpret or understand the information they are viewing. This results in interpretations of information being incorrectly “coded” because outsider researchers instead apply their own cultural framework and lens to what they observe, to interpret the data. They then come up with findings that are indicative of their own cultural backgrounds and not necessarily of those they are researching. Western research methods are unable to fully employ the elaborate code when working with Indigenous communities: the sheer complexity of traditions, family ties, cultural, governmental, and social processes cannot be broken down and explained within the time constraints of a research study. Indigenous knowledge is passed down over a lifetime: it is tied to age, family, gender, status, etc., and it is impossible to untangle the weaves over a series of interviews with an outsider. The ethnographers, traders, explorers, and researchers who came into contact with the tribes of the Chehalis River Basin were unable or unwilling to view the tribes from a world view other than that from which they themselves descended. Rather than learn who the tribes were as individual clans, the non-Indians would apply their own understanding of names, tribal groups, and familial relationships (Swan 1973; Swanton 1968; Work 1912). The writers, such as Swan (1973), Adamson (1927), Boas (1894), Chalcraft (1970), and Gibbs (1855, 1877, & 1972), were often writing their thoughts and impressions of Chehalis society for the purpose of exploiting the Chehalis story in the industrialized world. Chehalis were viewed as objects of study and for reports. Their story was sensationalized to bring the writer more status, fame, or income. They sold the Chehalis story to museums, universities, and newspapers to further their reputation or career, while the Chehalis, who had no concept of copyrights and patents, lost the rights to their own stories before they even knew their culture was a commodity.

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FINAL THOUGHTS The multiple tribes and bands that comprise the Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation contribute their own unique history to the story of the Chehalis. Research into the story of the Chehalis is complicated by the fact that each tribe integrated into the Confederation does not share the same story, which means many families bring their unique history to the overall story. It has been challenging to include these unique perspectives because one story is not the whole story. It has been common for families to disagree with the version of history shared by another family. This does not make either version inaccurate; each story may be very accurate but individualized to the tribe from which the family is descended. This multi-story perspective is a paradigm shift from the current one tribe-one story narrative many people think of when they reflect on the Chehalis story. Today, it is a habit to drop “the Confederated Tribes” part of “the Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation” for the much simpler “Chehalis Tribe.” While our current identity may be a cohesive tribal unit, our history is the history of many tribes, the multiple smaller tribes who make up the Confederation. Acknowledging this multifaceted, shared history encompasses the understanding that we all have individual stories within our shared history and the knowledge that has been passed down through the generations represents each one of us and our strand in the weave of our story. REFERENCES Adamson, T. “Ethnographic Notes.” Unpublished raw data, 1927. Bernstein, B. 1971. Class, Codes and Control: Theoretical Studies Towards a Sociology of Language. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Retrieved from: http:​ //​newlearningonline​.com​/new​-learning​/chapter​-5​/basil​-bernstein​-on​-restricted​-and​ -elaborated​-codes. Boas, F. Chinook Texts. United States: BiblioBazaar, 1894. Brayboy, Bryan McKinley Jones. 2005. “Toward a Tribal Critical Race Theory in Education.” The Urban Review 37 (5). Dordrecht: Springer, 425–46. doi:10.1007/ s11256-005-0018y. Chalcraft, E. R. “Chalcraft Memories of the Chehalis Indian Reservation.” Unpublished Manuscript, 1970. Chilisa, B. Indigenous Research Methodologies. Los Angeles: Sage Publications, INC., 2012. Conwell, M. “Walking the Chehalis Language Trail Home: A Strategy for Chehalis Language Revitalization and Development.” Thesis, Te Whare Wananga o Awanuiarangi, Whakatane, New Zealand, 2018.

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Deloria, Jr, V. 1991. “Indian Education in America.” Boulder, CO: American Indian Science and Engineering Society, Deloria, Jr, V. 1997. “Science and the Oral Tradition.” In Red Earth, White lies. Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing. Heck, S. “Transcripts of Personal Interviews with Members of the Chehalis Tribe/ Interviewer: Geraldine Lawrence and Stella Jo Staebler.” Transcript, Lewis County Historical Society, Chehalis, WA, 1964. Gibbs, G. 1855. “Text of the Records of the Proceedings of the Commission to Hold Treaties with the Indian Tribes of Washington Territory.” Retrieved from http:​//​ stories​.washingtonhistory​.org​/treatytrail​/treaties​/pdf​/chehalis​-council​.pdf. Gibbs, G. 1877. North American Ethnology, Tribes of Western Washington and Northwestern Oregon. Washington: Government Printing Office. Gibbs, G. Indian Tribes of Washington Territory. Fairfield, WA: Ye Galleon Press, 1972. Johnston, P. “He Ao Rereke: Education Policy and Maori Under-Achievement: Mechanisms of Power and Difference.” Thesis, University of Auckland, 1998. Karetu, T. 2002. Maori - New Zealand Latin? In Indigenous Languages Across the Community, ed. Barbara Burnaby & Jon Allan Reyhner, Flagstaff: Northern Arizona University. Lavallee, L. F. “Practical Application of an Indigenous Research Framework and Two Qualitative Indigenous Research Methods: Sharing Circles and Anishnaabe Symbol-Based Reflection.” Research Report, Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Ryerson University, 2009. Loewen, J. W. 2007. Lies My Teacher Told Me, Everything your American History Textbook Got Wrong. New York, NY: The New Press. Mills, C. Wright. 2000. The Sociological Imagination. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Palmer, K. V. 1925. Honne, the Spirit of the Chehalis. Geneva, NY: Press of W. F. Humphrey. Smith, L. T. 2012. Decolonizing Methodologies, Research and Indigenous Peoples (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Zed Books. Swan, J. G. 1973. The Northwest Coast or, Three Years’ Residence in Washington Territory (4th ed.). Seattle: University of Washington Press. Swanton, J. R. 1968. Indian Tribes of Washington, Oregon and Idaho. Fairfield: Ye Galleon Press. Wilson, S. 2008. Research is Ceremony, Indigenous Research Methods. Winnipeg, Manitoba: Fernwood Publishing. Work, J. 1912. “Journal of John Work, November and December 1824.” Washington Historical Quarterly. Retrieved from http:​//​www​.xmission​.com​/​~drudy​/mtman​/ html​/jwork​/work02​.html. Wight, Edgar L. 1960. Indian Reservations of Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. Portland, Ore: United States Department of the Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Portland Area Office. Zinn, H. 2005. A People’s History of the United States. New York. Harper Perennial Modern Classics.

Chapter Eleven

Politicizing Our Waters An Examination of the Boldt Decision’s Role in Anti-Indian Activism Drew Slaney

The Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest have known the region as their home for millennia, with cultures that flourished well before the arrival of Europeans and subsequent colonial pursuits.1 The cultures that have endured the countless occurrences of violence, exploitation, and the treaty making circuit spearheaded by Isaac I. Stevens, the first territorial governor of the Washington territory, have a long-established history linked to the region’s landscape and resources. The multitude of species of salmon and trout hold a special place among the others for its importance in Indigenous diets and spirituality. This resource was of so much importance that the Treaty of Medicine Creek (1854), which was designed to strip away the agreeing tribes’ title to millions of acres of land, at the very least assured that the right to take fish would be protected when fishing in common with other citizens of the territory at all “usual and accustomed grounds and stations” (Kappler 1904, 661–64). Over a hundred years later, the United States was facing the pressure of political strife abroad and at home, with Washington State facing a crisis of its own between the state’s ability to regulate its resources and commerce clashing with the tribes’ attempts to exercise the rights guaranteed in the treaties signed long before. The Treaty of Medicine Creek (1854) became a point of contention in the landmark case United States v. Washington (1974), which included the hotly debated Boldt Decision. This case became highly influential when Judge George H. Boldt issued the decision that the tribes that agreed to the terms of the treaty had a right to an equal share of the salmon harvest 135

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(Harjo 2014, 179). This ruling was celebrated by Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest, especially those that participated in the Fish-In Movement in the 1960s to mid-1970s, for it assured that the tribes of the region would have access to the resources vital to their ways of life. However, not all took kindly to Judge Boldt’s ruling. Notably, Washington State’s elected leaders resisted the decision and attacked the Indigenous nations that had succeeded in their effort to affirm the rights laid out by the treaties, using laws and language to further suppress tribes after United States v. Washington (1974). Private organizations with interests in salmon and steelhead runs also took measures to resist the Boldt Decision with the most brazen attempts orchestrated by sport fishing organizations that had staked a claim to the fish within Washington’s lakes and rivers. In the aftermath of the decision, sport fishing organizations came to the forefront of a movement designed to combat the tribal claims to fishing within Washington State and the judicial power of Judge Boldt. From political demonstrations that violated the law laid out by Boldt to cartoons and newspaper advertisements utilized to sway public opinion against Boldt, and the tribes involved, these organizations were champions of a cause spurred by a judicial ruling they believed unfairly treated the non-Indigenous people of Washington State. It is interesting to note that clubs and fishing publications were not always at odds with tribes and their fishing rights; instead, they spent much of their time combatting commercial interests in Washington waters. Many anti-Indigenous organizations within the state of Washington began as politically emboldened sport fishing clubs, and it is their political involvement before Boldt that catches the eye for its attention on industry rather than the tribes of Washington. The subsequent changing of course once tribes began exercising their rights lends credence to the idea that United States v. Washington (1974) along with the Boldt Decision were catalysts for sparking anti-Indian activism within the Pacific Northwest. METHODOLOGY To inform this paper, a various number of sources have been utilized to get as full a scope as possible. Much of the material presented comes from the University of Washington’s Special Collections, namely the Kenneth McLeod Papers, 1932–1987, which provided the bulk of the material presented. The collection includes large numbers of sources that shed greater light about anti-Indian activism with each piece of evidence. To give some context, Kenneth McLeod was an avid sport fisherman who took an active role in resisting commercial fishing interests, the Boldt Decision, and tribal influence in the Pacific Northwest with varying degrees of success and organizations.

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The material from this collection includes correspondence between McLeod and state officials, newspaper articles, cartoons collected by McLeod, advertisements, various records of McLeod’s organizations, and magazine articles published by McLeod or in the magazines, Pacific Sportsman and Northwest Sportsman that McLeod edited. Along with these papers, various political documents that concern Washington officials and legal battles provide additional information. The correspondence between McLeod and Washington State officials is important to this paper because it presents evidence that a substantial number of elected officials within Washington State viewed the Boldt Decision as an abridgement of the state’s right to govern its waterways and gives clues to how many of these officials accepted the idea that tribal governments unequally benefited from the decision. Newspaper articles give a glimpse into the events of the Boldt resistance, including organized protests along with stories of Judge Boldt hanged in effigy on occasion with photographic evidence to back up their stories. Like newspaper articles in their approach of spreading information, magazine articles stand apart because these articles were published by people within sport fishing organizations, giving readers a chance to view their political engagement from the point of view of the fishers. Cartoons are pieces of pop culture that carry a certain manipulative element that can be used to shape the opinions of those that view them for their ease of access and understanding. The McLeod collection includes a group of cartoons that showcase the resentment held toward Judge Boldt and the tribes. Many of these cartoons draw their political arguments from racist notions of unequal rights that will be explained in more detail later. In a similar realm as the cartoons, a small collection of advertisements offer insight into the many avenues taken to push against the United States v. Washington (1974) decision. Finally, the government documents utilized here include statements made by Washington U.S. senators. National level court cases provide information on how Washington pursued legal action against the Boldt Decision and Indigenous fishing claims, along with cases that are subject to being contested within Washington State in the modern day. LITERATURE REVIEW The Boldt Decision has been a popular subject among scholars whose research interests focus on the state reactions and unease regarding the case, the prelude to the case, or how the Boldt Decision influenced Indigenous peoples

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in the Pacific Northwest. Much of this scholarship began to be published in the mid-1990’s, nearly twenty years after the case was settled, which allowed researchers to collect enough information regarding the buildup to the trial, the trial itself, and some of the effects the Boldt Decision had on communities with a particular focus on Indigenous communities. However, scholarship on the movement that resisted Boldt and the tribes remains scarce and tends to focus on the language of groups formed to promote American conservative ideologies and specific events during the resistance period. Washington State is home to a massive sports fishing industry, and at the time of the Boldt Decision, the fishing groups of the state vehemently opposed sharing their claim to the salmon and trout supply and began working alongside the state of Washington and organizations to nullify treaty rights for Indigenous peoples. The article, “Treaty Rights: Twenty Years after the Boldt Decision,” by Jovana J. Brown examines the effects of the Boldt Decision twenty years after the fact and provides a brief history on the tribal and state relationship with the case and each other (Brown 1994, 2). For example, tribal governments faced difficulty when attempting to exercise their rights, agreed upon over a hundred years earlier through treaties, in the initial years after the Boldt Decision. Though these rights were affirmed in federal court, some Washington State officials, including former attorney general Slade Gorton, pretended as if the decision had not occurred, thus halting the efforts of Indigenous organizations to reassert their claims (ibid.). This opposition on the part of the state was not kept a secret among officials. Brown notes that the Governor of Washington at the time, Dixy Lee Ray, upon learning that the Boldt Decision was upheld in the Supreme Court, was quoted as having been fearful of further rulings that sided with tribes because Washington State would have increasingly less influence in areas concerning Washington’s ecology (ibid.). State government pushback against the federal decision was a key part of the reaction toward Boldt. It encouraged the negative reaction to spread from state senators to the governor and furthered the cause of sport fishing organizations against the tribes as these organizations had an opportunity to align themselves with people of power within the state. The immediate aftermath of the case is an interesting time in Pacific Northwest history because of the level of lawlessness exercised by anti-Boldt and anti-Indian activists that took a direct stance against federal law. Much of this resentment stems from the history non-Indian fishers had with their share of the fisheries’ catch, in that they held almost all claim to fishing in Washington. But after Boldt, they were forced by law to share with the tribes who had a very small claim before. Johansen (2010) deals with how the Boldt Decision sparked controversy between Indigenous and non-Indigenous fishermen (28). This controversy is seen to have had severe negative effects regarding the relationship between the two opposing groups, the tribes, and

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the sport fishing industry, with the ruling being celebrated as a victory by the former and reviled by the latter who viewed it as an affront on their own rights. This piece of scholarship’s focus on the ordinary citizen’s role in challenging federal law reveals how adamant the beliefs of these people were as violent actions, such as the vandalism of Indigenous fishing equipment and the open opposition of law enforcement, were not uncommon occurrences among these groups (ibid.). Johansen also points out that opposition to the settlement reached by Judge Boldt took non-physical forms, including rumors about Judge Boldt that attempted to smear his reputation by attacking his sanity and integrity, along with language utilized by those that sought to abrogate the treaties. The language touched upon in Johansen’s work becomes the center point of “In the Name of Equal Rights: ‘Special’ Rights and the Politics of Resentment in Post-Civil Rights America,” in Dudas (2005). Dudas’ focus on the language of legal conservative activists gives greater insight into power inherent within certain words, which can do much to transform the arguments and presentation of the organizations that use them. Words and phrases, such as “unconstitutional,” “special rights,” and “supercitizen,” supplemented the vocabulary of citizens and high-ranking Washington State officials alike in their attempts to fight the gains made by Indigenous peoples from the 1960s to the 1980s (Johansen 2010, 28). Language provides the bedrock for how individuals or organizations represent themselves and how they are perceived in the public sphere. Utilizing terms such as “special” and “super” in conjunction with rights and citizens caters to a population raised within the United States. This is due to the Constitution’s promotion of the establishment of rights that are meant to apply to all citizens of the United States without benefitting or denying a specific population of citizens under the Fourteenth Amendment. The intended effect of this language is that the rights affirmed by the Boldt Decision and rights granted by the plethora of treaties with U.S. tribes can be painted in a negative light for “unequally” benefitting Indigenous peoples and, by extension, can be interpreted as violating the equal protections laid out within the U.S. Constitution (Dudas 2005, 743). The ironic aspect of this use of language is that Article VI, Section II of the Constitution, better known as the Supremacy Clause, establishes that treaties made by the United States are to be treated as the “supreme Law of the Land,” and goes on to say that judges in all states will follow the laws and regulations laid out within treaties (U.S. Const. art. VI, § 2, cl. 2). With the Supremacy Clause in mind, Washington State officials and organizations (and those of any state) that openly defy treaty rights are, in fact, in violation of the Constitution that they stand behind.

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HISTORICAL CONTEXT A decade before the Boldt Decision significantly altered the political landscape of Washington state, activism on the part of Indigenous peoples and organizations, such as the American Indian Movement (AIM), worked to form the basis of the Red Power Movement that was focused on bringing Indigenous social issues to the forefront of American politics. Locations, such as Alcatraz Island that was occupied by AIM in 1969 and Frank’s Landing, served as representations of Indigenous efforts to support their treaty rights in the mid-1960s to 1970s (Blansett 2018, 170). Frank’s Landing served as an encampment for Indigenous protestors and their “fish-ins,” similar to the “sit-ins” of the Civil Rights Movement, openly opposed Washington state’s usage of the U.S. Public Law 280 passed in 1953 which granted select states jurisdiction over criminal and civil matters that were once under the control of tribal governments (ibid., 178–79). Washington became notorious among Indigenous communities for including the regulation of Indigenous hunting and fishing rights within its own interpretation of Public Law 280 to further the state’s own financial interests (ibid.). The continued Indigenous protest of the state’s violation of the treaties culminated into what would be known as the “fishing wars” that helped launch the activist and political career of Billy Frank Jr. from the Nisqually Tribe who spearheaded the campaign in the mid-1960s at Frank’s Landing. The Boldt Decision came at the climax of tensions between Washington state, the involved tribes, and non-Indigenous people that had some stake in the fishing claims. Boldt recognized that this issue had a complicated history dating back to the mid-nineteenth century, which would require multiple phases of judicial involvement to settle. To remedy this history, Boldt split the ruling into two phases, with the first phase known as the “Boldt Decision” that concerned the interpretation of the treaties signed by Isaac Stevens in the 1850s and the allocation of Washington’s fish resources, and the second phase that still has some portions being debated today concerning the state’s role in maintaining the environmental health of fish runs in the state (Kamb 2004). PRIOR POLITICAL INVOLVEMENT Fishing for sport in the Pacific Northwest is an incredibly popular hobby for the region’s vast number of fishing areas which have also proved important to commercial interests. Sports fishing is popular enough in the state of Washington that in 2009, sports fishing generated $1.1 billion in yearly revenue for the state (WDFW 2009). The profit from sport fishing explains one

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side of the state’s aggression against the Boldt Decision about thirty years prior since the state would consider preserving a large revenue generator over affirming treaty rights agreed upon a little over a hundred years before. But while the state government holds a significant role in state politics and the Boldt Decision likewise, it is ultimately the power vested in the citizens of the state that can have significant influence in state politics as seen with ordinary tribal members sparking one of the most controversial court cases in Washington State history. Sport fishing organizations and activists recognized this power while the contention of United States v. Washington (1974) was underway, and well before the Washington Fishing Wars. Beginning in the 1930s, anglers across Washington often engaged in state politics by seeking the support of elected officials or the public for specific initiatives that benefitted their interests (Pacific Sportsman 1932). A 1932 article from the sport fishing magazine, The Pacific Sportsman, entitled “State Game Control Wins in Evergreen State,” provides some insight into the political work prior to Boldt. The article celebrates Kenneth McLeod’s role in waging “a great battle for the success of Initiative 62” (ibid.). The initiative itself concerned the removal of county Fish and Game departments to centralize fish and game departments and related matters into a single state-run Fish and Game Department. Before the initiative went into effect, each county within Washington State had its own department that dealt with matters relating to fish and game, which tended to result in confusion over differing rules and regulations between counties (ibid.). While McLeod and the other anglers’ role in passing the initiative is somewhat vague in the article, their mention in the magazine shows that sport fishermen had political experience and were actively engaged in Washington politics. In the case of Initiative 62, the state gained greater control over the waters within the state, and according to McLeod, anglers would benefit from a better managed economic system within the state Fish and Game department that would lower the prices of permits and lead to an abundance of fish in Washington streams (The Northwest Sportsman, July 1931, 4). Before sport fishers became involved in the issue of treaty rights, these outdoors-minded people were actively involved in the preservation of the Pacific Northwest’s ecosystem that was home to the fish they prized. In 1931, a measure to establish a diversion dam in Deer Creek, located in Washington’s Snohomish County, faced extreme pressure from fishers like McLeod since it would disrupt the spawning of fish important to the ecosystem (ibid., 8). The plan for this dam came at a time with an increase of hydraulic resources that required the implementation of dams to provide energy, as well as jobs for growing communities. Though despite providing cheap energy, plans to build dams in Washington streams faced adversity for their negative effect on

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habitats with organizations, such as the Commercial Club of Arlington based in Arlington, WA seeing to a commitment to preserve streams and rivers like Deer Creek and the Stillaguamish River that runs through Arlington, WA (The Norwest Sportsman, June 1931, 9). FORMULATION OF IDEOLOGY A key piece to understanding how fishers and Washington State officials presented their arguments is to understand the basis for their arguments, and their plan for approaching the dispute over treaty rights. Creating set goals, using popular media, and winning the cooperation of state officials significantly contributed to how anti-Boldt and anti-Indian organizations furthered their agendas. The Washington State Political Action Committee (WSPAC) had a clearly defined action plan to dismantle the regulations set by the Boldt Decision and, in turn, the treaties involved in the decision (Dudas 2008, 71). According to a memo sent to members of WSPAC, the first priority in its battle against Phase I of the Boldt Decision was to spur public opinion against the Boldt Decision, to create defined distinctions within Washington’s population that would prove useful in further organization against Judge Boldt and tribal governments (ibid.). The next step in the WSPAC’s process was to garner the support of other industries within the state of Washington by first informing them that Boldt carried wider consequences that stretched beyond the issues of the fishing industry, then making it clear to powerful members of separate industries that the main problem had stemmed from an overextension of power from federal judges, and finally, attempting to spark fear among other industries in Washington with a declaration that other industries would face regulation dictated by federal judges (ibid.). The third and final step in the WSPAC memo was to petition Washington State’s congressional delegation to lead an effort to remove the regulations set in the Boldt Decision (ibid. 28.) This broad action plan was successful in its first priority. In 1976, the Seattle Times reported that in a poll of 470 residents within the Puget Sound region, almost fifty percent opposed the Boldt Decision, as compared to twenty-six percent in favor. The remaining percentage polled had not decided or simply had no opinion (ibid., 72). This report shows the effectiveness of the plan created by the WSPAC and the persuasive element to the equal rights rhetoric that this committee along with other like-minded fishers and state officials touted. It is interesting to see the ways step one of the WSPAC plan was executed, with the most shamelessly offensive and effective methods being the use of newspaper political cartoons. This popular form of media proved useful in presenting the Boldt Decision and the involved tribes as having either

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misused their power or having “special rights.” Apart from the stereotypical depictions of Indigenous people, comics are only one among a plethora of similarly politically minded media that painted the tribes as making unreasonable demands. Such cartoons would help set the stage for the resistance endeavors undertaken by those who bought into these political ideals. Some Washington State public officials ranked among those who sought drastic changes to federal policy regarding Indigenous people. Attorney General Slade Gorton was one of these officials who attempted to do away with portions of Indian law that did not directly benefit the state. With a special rights ideology, the attorney general, through the years, had failed to achieve the substantial changes that he wanted, but he was ultimately successful in delaying the implementation of the regulations that he opposed for nearly a decade by using Washington state and U.S. courts to appeal the decision (Dudas 2008, 75). Particularly dangerous to treaty rights was the pervasiveness of the opposition, and the threat of federal courts that had the power to decide the fate of the rights guaranteed by Boldt in United States v. Washington (1974) and by Stevens before him in the Treaty of Medicine Creek (1854). ANTI-INDIAN AND BOLDT ACTIVISM Over two decades, claims regarding fishing rights covered several stages that ranged from a more diplomatic approach to reach an agreement to more aggressive and violent approaches to further the angler agenda. One of the more interesting approaches for its outside-of-the-box methodology was an attempt made by U.S. Senator Warren G. Magnuson to pass resolutions S.J. Res. 170 and S.J. Res. 171 on April 17, 1964, which concerned a small amount of unregulated fishing that supposedly created disorder within Washington fisheries (Magnuson 1964). Magnuson stated on the floor of the U.S. Senate that S.J. Res. 170 would grant Washington State the right to regulate fishing outside of American Indian reservations for conservation purposes. In addition, he made it clear that if regulation were to occur, it would be applied equally to all citizens of Washington (ibid.). Magnuson, well-versed in U.S. politics, took a lawful approach when addressing the treaty rights of Indigenous peoples in Washington. S.J. Res. 171 would have authorized an attempt to purchase Nisqually fishery claims to circumvent a lengthy court battle between the state and tribal governments by providing an estimated $918,444.68 in monetary compensation (ibid.). This was not the first attempt by politicians to purchase Indigenous fishing claims nor would it be the last. Former senator Slade Gorton attempted a similar method of securing Washington’s power of the waters in the region (Johansen 2010, 28).

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The tribes that were offered monetary compensation were wary of accepting the proposal as they viewed it as another method of terminating their federal recognition. While this may have been a disappointment to state officials, the tribes had good reason to be cautious. In 1954, Congress ended federal recognition of 110 tribes (Walch 1983, 1185–86). Termination at this time was another method by which the United States government sought to assimilate Indigenous peoples into mainstream American culture. By ending any sort of recognition of the terminated tribes, the United States government eliminated any federal aid and land claims established by past treaties. This attempt at assimilation, while not as brutish as the residential boarding school system, still posed a serious threat to Indigenous cultures. Their claims to their original lands were necessary to preserving their culture: any further loss of land would compromise their way of life. While government officials took a judicial and legislative approach to resisting the Boldt Decision, anglers took a more hands-on approach to combat the tribal government and Judge Boldt himself. Following the Boldt Decision, campaigns that sought the resignation of Judge Boldt or threats made on his life began to gain traction and popularity throughout Washington as his decision was viewed as a detriment to non-Indigenous citizens and as an overextension of judicial power. Included in this battle against Boldt was the creation of a political action committee (PAC) called the “Freedom from Federal Judges Fund” that promoted the idea that federal judges inhibit American ideals of freedom (Advertisement n.d.). An undated advertisement for this PAC notes the coming of the second court proceedings regarding United States v. Washington, commonly referred to as “Boldt II” (ibid.). This PAC requested signatures of inflamed citizens to petition for the resignation of Judge Boldt. The advertisement justifies this action by stating that the initial decision had been responsible for the decimation of steelhead runs and attempted to spur greater fear within the public by declaring that, if the planned provision of Boldt II were to be enacted, then Washington State tribal governments would gain the power to veto any private activities within the watershed treaty rivers (ibid.). If this decision were to be the case, then Washington State and sport fishers alike would have to recognize tribal governments as partners for any new project to be planned in the waters that the treaties mentioned. Sport fishers and the state feared the prospect of having to answer to tribal governments since they had claim over the fish decades before Boldt. The advertisement also refers to a decline in the steelhead population, which shows that organizations, such as the “Freedom from Federal Judges Fund,” used ecological conservation to appeal to a Washington population that was keen on exploring and engaging with the state’s bounty of land and wildlife.

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This fear of Washington tribes accumulating power sparked anger and resentment among those with interest in non-Indigenous fishing. The anger created was then directed at Judge Boldt and at the tribes involved. A Seattle Daily Times article dated September 11, 1978, titled “Boldt-Protest Fleet Delays Ferry,” covered an anti-Boldt and anti-Indian protest held in Friday Harbor located in the San Juan Islands. Rallies at this time were not a new form of resistance, as protests became common occurrence in the region earlier in the decade, even interrupting President Gerald Ford’s 1976 visit in Seattle (Cohen 1989, 89). The demonstration itself, organized by John McLeod (relationship unknown to Kenneth McLeod) under the banner of the Fishermen’s Equal Rights Group, incorporated a total of seventy-five fishing boats and other watercrafts to block a ferry leaving Friday Harbor (Seattle Daily Times, Sept. 11, 1978, 14). While the demonstration only delayed the ferry by twenty minutes (which the ferry made up) before being dispersed by Coast Guard and State Patrol officers, the method of protest and the comments of the sympathizers in the ferry along with the demonstrators tell much about the political climate at the time. One boat named “Liberty” floating among the crowd of protesting vessels made clear its criticism of Judge Boldt and the tribes with signs painted on the ship itself reading “Shove it Boldt,” “Non-Indian & Proud of it!” and “Indians are racist” among other signs of the same vein This fishing vessel with its signs displays the opinions of the anglers that converged on the area and showcases the more racially charged beliefs that underlined the efforts of the sport fishers. Anglers used boats such as these to halt the ferry and carry out the symbolic demand that the ferry could only pass by if fifty percent of the passengers were “Indians” (ibid.). They sometimes carried other objects of protest. One of these objects depicted Judge Boldt hanged in effigy with a sign that read “A dead Boldt is a good Boldt,” which was only one of many attempts to attack the judge. He had been the center point for rumors that questioned his character, even going so far as to assume that he had taken bribes and had an Indigenous mistress (Johannsen 2010, 28). Those aboard the ferry had comments of their own that highlight the mood at the time. One passenger called for violence, which reflected the attitudes of those that hanged Boldt in effigy. He said, “The Negroes didn’t accomplish anything in the civil-rights movement until there was violence” (Seattle Daily Times, Sept. 11, 1978, 14). This quote misunderstands the power of the non-violent approach to protest that the Civil Rights Movement successfully engaged in. Interestingly though, it carried the idea that the protesters compared themselves to the likes of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or Fannie Lou Hamer, though with an ecological preservation façade and a discriminatory underbelly.

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John McLeod, the organizer of the Friday Harbor protest, was quoted as saying, “All we want is to be treated equally. There can’t be separate laws for separate races. Everyone has to be the same” (ibid.). He also carried on to say that his organization would continue their protest unless “government-enforced racial discrimination ends,” though it is unclear if he did in fact organize more protests (ibid.). The sport fishers who engaged in these acts tended to see themselves as having been discriminated against. They used the terminology previously mentioned by Dudas also seen during the Friday Harbor protest as one disgruntled passenger and third-generation fisherman said, “I don’t think he should create a super class of people.” This statement referred to the tribes and the claims affirmed by the Boldt Decision (ibid.). By having referred to Indigenous people as a super class, the anonymous passenger ignored centuries of history and attempts to sway the opinions of readers as he compared treaty rights to an unequal agreement that harmed most non-Indian fishers. Dudas notes that this position has the power to negate the efforts of minority groups (Dudas 2005, 2). By attempting to begin the process of treaty nullification, these anglers rejected any claim to fish other than their own and made their opinions most often heard by placing all their misfortune on the changing of laws that they did not consider in their best interest. Washington State was not helpful in the attempt to enforce the Boldt Decision, since the ruling was unfavorable to the state government’s economic interests. State officials, who acted as if the Boldt ruling did not exist, added to the issue. They also took legal action against Indigenous fishers, which was only effective in that they spurred greater resistance among Washington sport fishing organizations as the state now acted as a governing body that protected those that defied federal jurisdiction. Public disobedience became commonplace among anglers, which led to many protesters maintaining fisheries that operated on days that were to be reserved for Indigenous treaty fishers, thereby illegally taking a share of fish strictly forbidden by federal law (Dudas 2008, 70). Washington’s apathy toward this illegal catch worried those sent to enforce the rules of the Boldt Decision. One federal task force appointed by President Jimmy Carter in 1977 noted that the fishers had lost their faith in the courts and law enforcement since these institutions had not represented their interests and did little to stop the illegal fishing (ibid., 71). With a general sense of lawlessness in the air, the ability of law enforcement to take care of illegal fishing dramatically declined as the number of defiant sport fishers increased. Thus, it was perhaps no accident that these fishers were able to catch an estimated 183,000 illegal fish in 1977, worth around $1.4 million.

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Washington officials, including the State Patrol, hardly enforced the Boldt Decision and the local judges who may have seen a rare case of illegal fishing did more to protect the perpetrator than to follow the federal protocol laid out by Judge Boldt (ibid). Given the lack of interest displayed by state officials who should have enforced the ruling, it is no surprise that federal enforcement officers, such as the Coast Guard, were harassed. Coast Guard vessels were rammed by fishing vessels, and a Coast Guardsman was shot in one instance (Johansen 2010, 28). State officials seemed only to utilize the law when it benefitted themselves by harming Indigenous claims followed by applause from sport fishers across the Pacific Northwest. Under the guise of environmental protection, some officials focused on outlawing equipment, such as gill nets that were commonly used by Indigenous fishers. One congressman in 1978, Don Bonker, in correspondence with Kenneth McLeod, stated that he was confident that Indian net harvesting of steelhead could be abolished through negotiations (Bonker 1977). This correspondence shows that the state worked alongside sport fishers to fight tribes both regarding their claims to the fish and their actual ability to catch the fish as promised in the treaties. However, it should be considered that Congressman Bonker did not necessarily pursue complete nullification of treaty rights, because he made it clear when writing back to McLeod that he did not believe it could be possible (ibid.). This comment is significant because it shows that, in place of a large anti-Indian victory, such as the overturning of Boldt or tribal rights protected by treaties, some of those who championed the ideals of conservative ideologies sought small victories that would still potentially harm Indigenous fishing. It should be noted that not all sport fishers and their allies worked in lock step during the Boldt Decision protests. Indigenous and non-Indigenous individuals took issue with the controversy surrounding the Decision, and the Boldt Decision itself. A passenger on the ferry involved in the previously mentioned Friday Harbor protest was quoted as saying, “This is all so stupid to me. . . . There ought to be a better way.” (Seattle Daily Times, Sept. 11, 1978.) This passenger and her comment seem representative of a population that simply had very little investment in the Boldt Decision itself and, therefore, saw the commotion as ultimately unnecessary. Some of those among the Indigenous population who supported treaty rights saw the Boldt Decision as a loss since it federally mandated that fifty percent of the catch was to be reserved for non-Indigenous fishers. Before contact, the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest had enjoyed and cared for one hundred percent of the salmon and steelhead runs since time immemorial (Cohen 1989, 88). Plus, not all non-Indigenous fishers fished illegally. Many may not have agreed with Judge Boldt, but they still respected his decision and chose to follow federal law rather than openly defy it (ibid.). These people may not

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have been the most active or vocal about their opinions, but their opinions are worth mentioning as they show that this case was overshadowed by powerful organizations that crowded out those that did not have a large support base. CONCLUSION The Boldt Decision is a landmark case that has set the standard for fishing law and regulations within the Pacific Northwest since 1974. The controversy that surrounded the case has been the subject of research for decades now, with many scholars currently adding to the literature on the subject. Politics in Washington state were forever altered by Judge Boldt’s decision. It is because of this decision and its beneficial nature toward the tribes living in Washington that sport fishers turned against Judge Boldt and the tribes involved. Some, under the guise of environmental protection, and others, with a more avaricious motive, took measures to defame Judge Boldt, overturn the Boldt Decision through public and legislative avenues, and assault tribal claims to fishing rights. A great deal of the methods employed by state legislators, state officials, and anglers were racially motivated, with the worst of racist ideologies showcased in cartoons that utilized stereotypical imagery along with bigoted phrases that were meant to influence the local population. They also encompassed the pseudo-white supremacist connotations seen in some of the statements of Boldt protestors. The Boldt Decision remains an influential case and has served as a reference point for activists on both sides of treaty rights discussion. Much of the scholarship requires further attention; for instance, sport fishers often gathered under organizations that focused on abrogating the treaties or pushing legislation created to cut Indigenous people from their traditional resources. Washington has housed many anti-Indian organizations and these organizations often changed names and rebranded themselves once the group proved ineffective. It was also common for individuals in these groups to become active members of broader organizations, such as S/SPAWN, Interstate Congress for Equal Rights and Responsibilities (ICERR), and the still active Citizens Equal Rights Alliance (CERA) which usually held onto notions of absolute equality meaning an erasure of all legally mandated privileges to marginalized groups, even if it meant the nullification of treaties (Drumming Up Resentment 2000, 7). Some organizations continue to carry on the fight against treaty rights, with CERA maintaining a powerful voice. Generally, those affected by the Boldt Decision still hold strong opinions for or against the decision, with many non-Indigenous people engaged in Washington fishing harboring resentment against Boldt and the incorporated tribes. For Washington tribes involved

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in this case, the Boldt Decision allowed them to develop stronger forms of sovereignty and self-determination. However, the same is true for sport fishers and Washington officials who wish these treaties would disappear, which carried into a larger movement set against the tribes within Washington and the United States. EPILOGUE Today, tribal governments working within the state of Washington act as partners with the state to come to decisions that should better represent the whole of Washington’s people. However, the controversy that surrounded United States vs. Washington (1974) has had an impact on sport fishers, environmental activists, and some Washington State officials who have been emboldened by the legacy of the Boldt Decision and have taken measures to suppress traditional Indigenous customs for differing reasons. There are still sport fishers that view the Boldt Decision along with treaty rights as an abridgement of equality and have shifted their focus on a national level by joining forces with organizations like CERA to lend their talents to battle tribes and federal laws that benefit Indigenous peoples (ibid., 40). Environmental activists, such as Paul Watson and the Sea Shephard crew, have been critical of Makah whale hunting in the past. Environmental activists’ desires to protect whales have clashed with Indigenous tribes who wish to reestablish their culture of whale hunting. This conflict climaxed in 1999 with a standoff between the Sea Shephard and the Makah in Neah Bay, caused by the Sea Shephard’s crusade against whaling (Dunagan 1998). Recently, a twenty-year-old case regarding Washington State’s culverts and their hindrance of salmon spawning reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 2018. The court decided in favor of the tribes and ordered Washington to fix the culverts. Despite many individuals and multiple courts agreeing that culverts have a damaging effect on the state’s salmon and steelhead runs, Washington’s current attorney general, Bob Ferguson, has resisted the courts and the tribes similar in manner to one of his predecessors, Slade Gorton. However, Washington’s current governor, Jay Inslee, has stated that he does not agree with Ferguson on this case (Mapes 2018). The battle over treaty rights is almost always up for contention, and these cases demonstrate that such battles will continue well into the twenty-first century.

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REFERENCES Advertisement, n.d. “Impeach Judge Boldt? No! He should resign!” Kenneth McLeod Papers. MS-2487–005, Box 1, Subject Series: Political Action Committee. Special Collections, University of Washington, Seattle, WA. Blansett, Kent. 2018. Journey to Freedom: Richard Oakes, Alcatraz, and the Red Power Movement. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Bonker, Don. 17 Nov. 1977. Incoming letter to Kenneth McLeod. Kenneth McLeod Papers. MS-2487–005, Box 1, Incoming Letters A-L. Special Collections, University of Washington, Seattle, WA. Brown, Jovana J. “Treaty Rights: Twenty Years after the Boldt Decision.” Wicazo Sa Review 10, no. 2 (Autumn 1994): 1–16. Cohen, Fay G. 1989. Treaties on Trial. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press. Dudas, Jeffery R. 2008. The Cultivation of Resentment: Treaty Rights and the New Right. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Dudas, Jeffrey R. “In the Name of Equal Rights: ‘Special’ Rights and the Politics of Resentment in Post-Civil Rights America.” Law & Society Review 39, no. 4 (Dec. 2005): 723–57. Dunagan, Charles. 1998. “Hunters Become the Hunted.” Kitsap Sun, Oct. 5th, 1998. https:​//​products​.kitsapsun​.com​/archive​/1998​/10​-05​/0056​_hunters​_become​ _the​_hunted​.html. Harjo, Suzan, ed. 2014. Nation to Nation: Treaties Between the United States and American Indian Nations. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books. Johansen, Bruce E. 2010. Native Americans Today: A Biographical Dictionary. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Press. Kappler, Charles Joseph, and United States. Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, LLMC-digital Series. Washington: G.P.O., 1904. Magnuson, Warren G. 17 April 1964. Statement Made on the Floor of the U.S. Senate. Kenneth McLeod Papers. MS2487–005, Box 1, Statements 1964–1981. Special Collections, University of Washington, Seattle, WA Mapes, Lynda V. 2018. “Supreme Court Showdown: Washington’s Attorney General vs. Tribes Over Salmon Habitat.” The Seattle Times, April 17th, 2018. https:​//​www​ .seattletimes​.com​/seattle​-news​/supreme​-court​-showdown​-washingtons​-attorney​ -general​-vs​-tribes​-over​-salmon​-habitat​/. McLeod, Kenneth, Papers. 1932–1987. Personal Papers. University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections, Seattle, WA. Montana Human Rights Network. 2000. Drumming Up Resentment: The Anti-Indian Movement in Montana. Helena, MT: Montana Human Rights Network. The Seattle Daily Times. “Judge Boldt Hanged in Effigy,” “Protesting Fishing Vessel in Friday Harbor.” Sept. 11, 1978. “State Game Control Wins in Evergreen State.” Pacific Sportsman, December 1932. Walch, Michael C. “Terminating the Indian Termination Policy.” Stanford Law Review 35, no. 6 (July 1983): 1181–215. doi:10.2307/1228583. Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife (WDFW). 2009. Fish, Wildlife, and Washington’s Economy. WDFW Publication. Olympia, Washington.

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“We Won’t Play.” The Northwest Sportsman, July 1931. “What Washington Needs.” The Northwest Sportsman, June 1931.

NOTE 1. I wish to thank my stepfather, Chuck, and my mother, Leah, for their continuous support of my academic career, and for lending resources that were of great help to this project. I would also like to extend my thanks to my advisor, Dr. Julie Nicoletta, for offering direction and providing feedback on ways to improve both the writing and research process.

Index

aboriginal, 83–85, 94 academic Institutions, 53, 58, 72, 74, 79 activism, 72, 74, 75, 78, 79, 84, 136, 140 advocacy, 21–22, 34, 48, 50, 71–72, 89 American Indian Movement, 17, 140 ancestors, 11–12, 18, 23, 24, 37, 40, 41, 48, 53, 62, 69, 83–85, 87, 89, 91, 94, 113, 115, 120, 123 anthropocentric/nonanthropocentric, 4, 54, 57 aquifer(s), 12, 25, 35 assimilation, 49, 53, 93, 99, 144

anthropogenic, 33 colonization, 11–12, 25, 55–56, 73–74, 76, 83, 86, 92–93, 99, 102–3, 105, 111, 116–18, 120, 123 COVID-19, 34, 50 critical race theory, 54; eco, 54; tribal, 116 cultural realism, 8 decolonization, 41, 49, 55–56, 59, 78, 114–16, 124, 125 Deloria, Vine Jr., 5, 8, 58, 60, 121, 125–26 Descartes, Rene, 32 Dewey, John, 3

Bacon, Sir Francis, 31–32 bees, 61–62, 66–67, 69 BIPOC, 45–50, 84, 87–88, 91 boarding schools, 46–47, 49, 53, 86, 93, 104, 144 Boldt Decision, 135–50 Burroughs, William S., 34 Canada, 62, 72, 73, 78 canoe, 108–10 capitalism, 6, 13, 30, 78 ceremonies, 1, 7, 21, 24, 71, 74, 93, 118, Chehalis Tribe, 116, 120, 122, 130 climate Change, 33, 45, 54, 56, 59, 87, 88, 90, 94;

ecological succession, 37–38 education, 49, 54, 72, 99–100, 102–8, 111, 116, 121, environmental: activism, 74, 79, 149; crisis, 4–6, 33; consciousness, 33, 56, 57; health disparities, 53–54, 57, 59; health solutions, 56; justice, 49, 58, 88–90; protection, 72, 147 ethnologists, 117–18

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feminism, 76; Indigenous, 72–77 Hawaiian: government, 13; history, 13, 20, 25; islands, 11, 16; language, 12, 14; people, 11, 13, 14, 15, 19–21; traditions, 16; worldview, 17 health: disparities, 53–54, 87, 93; environmental, 56, 59, 62, 140 heteropatriarchy, 49, 72–74, 76–78 Indigenous: approach to research, 123; activism, 78; communities, 59, 60, 115, 125– 26, 128–29, 131–32, 138, 140; epistemologies, 53; feminism, 72–77; identities, 18, 75, 83, 89; knowledge, 3, 47, 53, 59, 62, 116, 123–25, 132; knowledge Systems, 60, 95, 99, 124; language, 83, 85, 95, 101, 105–6, 121, 127, 130–31; methodologies, 71–72 123; researchers, 123, 125– 26, 128, 129; research paradigm, 124, 128 justice: climate 53–54, 57–58; environmental 59, 88–91; restorative, 41; social, 48, 50, 57–58, 77, 111, 116 Kaupapa Maori, 124–27, 131 Kimmerer, Robin, 33, 53, 94 Land Back Movement, 41, 50

language, 1, 7, 33–34, 102–3, 107, 111, 113–14, 121, 131, 133; Chehalis, 121, 130–31; Māori, 127; relating to law 136, 138–39; revitalization, 22, 130; Indigenous, 83, 85; Lummi, 101, 105–6 Lgbtq, 92 Lummi Nation, 99, 103, 106–7 Mauna Kea, 22–23 Medicine Creek, Treaty of, 135, 143 Menominee: forest, 29–30, 35, 39; and logging, 30; reservation, 29 methodologies: Chehalis, 128, 131; Indigenous, 71–72, 125; Indigenous Feminist, 73; Kaupapa Maori, 131; scientific, 2, 4, 123–24; western, 124, 128 military, U.S., 11, 14, 16 paradigm: Indigenous, 72, 124, 128; western, 55, 94; queer, 83 pedagogy, 105; critical, 54, 58; colonized, 53, 58; decolonized, 57 protest, 14, 19, 140, 145, 146, 147 queer:

communities, 88; identity, 83–89, 92, 94–95; resilience, 93

racism, 46–47, 53–54, 72–73, 75–76, 78–79, 88, 90, 95, 116 resilience, 7, 57, 83–84, 89, 92–94

Index

Salish Sea, 88 settler colonialism, 24, 45–46, 48–49, 74, 76, 87, 93, 94 sexism, 75–76, 78–79, 90 Smith, Linda Tuhiwai, 114–16, 122–23, 125–27, 129, 130 sovereignty, 12, 18, 24, 25, 50, 54–55, 72, 77, 99–100, 106–8, 149 storytelling, 8, 74, 77, 117, sustainability, 2, 7, 53–54, 58, 99 technology: in relation to nature, 32 thirty-meter telescope (TMT), 22 traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) 1, 4–8; and art, 2–4; in contemporary literature, 2;

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in relation to scientific methodologies, 2 treaty, 14; rights, 106; Of Medicine Creek, 135, 143 Unites States, 14, 16, 18, 30, 45, 47, 53, 68, 72, 85, 118, 135–37, 139, 141, 143–44, 149 Washington State, 135–49 watershed(s), 22, 117, 144 western civilization: and separation, 30–32; in America, 30; views on nature, 30–32, 38, 94 white supremacy, 45, 75, 87, 93, Wildcat, Daniel R., 5, 54 Wilson, Shawn, 72, 108, 128

About the Contributors Editor: Michelle Montgomery

Michelle Montgomery, PhD (enrolled Haliwa Saponi/descendant Eastern Band Cherokee), is associate professor and chair of the Division of Social and Historical Studies in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington, Tacoma. She is also the assistant director for the Office of Undergraduate Education, the Indigenous Curriculum and community advisor for the School of Education, and Interim Director for Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Bioethics and Humanities School of Medicine. Dr. Montgomery’s scholarship focuses on Indigenizing and decolonizing the climate justice narrative through the Indigenous Speaker Series, environmental ethics connected to Indigenous Peoples’ identities, and eco-critical race theory to eliminate racial and environmental oppression. CONTRIBUTORS Paulette Blanchard, PhD (Absentee Shawnee & Kickapoo), holds a Doctorate in Geography from the University of Kansas, Master of Arts in Geography from the University of Oklahoma, and a Bachelor of Arts in Indigenous & American Indian Studies from Haskell Indian Nations University. Her work addresses the challenges and opportunities that Indigenous Peoples face in relation to climate change and climate justice. Her work also addresses Indigenous science and science education, Indigenous led environmental movements, and activism. She incorporates Indigenous Feminist methodologies and philosophies into her geographic framework. Her work includes social, climate, and environmental justice for Indigenous Peoples and other marginalized population. 157

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Michael Chang is senior associate at Cascadia Consulting Group, where he provides expertise in climate vulnerability assessments, climate adaptation and action planning, community engagement, and facilitation for a variety of local, state, and tribal governments. Michael also leads Cascadia’s racial equity, supporting other Cascadian’s and clients to lead with equity to create more inclusive and equitable outcomes. He has authored multiple climate reports, including the 4th National Climate Assessment, and is currently a co-chair of the Equity & Justice Workgroup for the National Adaptation Forum and the Rising Voices program for Indigenous and Earth Sciences. Michael is currently the lead author for the Northwest chapter of the 5th National Climate Assessment. Prior to Cascadia, Michael worked as the climate adaptation specialist for the Makah Tribe. Michael holds an M.M.A. from the University of Washington and a B.S. in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology from Yale University. When not working, he loves spending time with his dogs, swimming laps at the local pool, making homemade cider and limoncello, and learning how to sail. Mary DuPuis, PhD, is Director of Education and Development for the Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation. She received her Doctorate of Indigenous Development and Advancement from Te Whare Wananga o Awanuiarangi in Whakatane, NZ in 2018. Her thesis, “A Long Time Ago, When the Earth was Young” an Indigenous History of the Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation” won the Emeritus Professor Roger Green ONZM Award for Top Thesis. She lives in Olympia, WA with her husband and four children. Merisa Jones is a member of the Lummi Nation located in Bellingham, WA. She currently holds the Senior Policy Analyst at the Lummi Indian Business Council. Merisa is an alumni of the Northwest Indian College and since then has obtained her Master of Public Administration in Tribal Governance from The Evergreen State College and is working toward her Indigenous-Based Education Leadership Doctoral Degree at the University of Washington-Tacoma. Throughout her education journey, she has been passionate about researching ways to achieve education sovereignty and work toward decolonization within in education system. Melanie Kirby (Tortugas Pueblo) has been taken around the world for 25 years with bees as her teachers—exposing her to the broader concepts and implications of land stewardship, agroecology, food systems, and diverse world views on conservation and outreach. In 2005, she established Zia Queenbees Farm & Field Institute (www​.ziaqueenbees​.com) which specializes in breeding regionally-adaptive bees. Melanie is a Fulbright-National

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Geographic Storytelling Fellow and holds a graduate degree in Entomology. She is a mestiza (of mixed Indigenous, Hispanic, Caribbean, and European) descent and works across cultures and landscapes promoting healthy pollinator conservation efforts with various communities and organizations. Additionally, Melanie works as the Extension Educator for the Institute of American Indian Arts (www​ .iaia​ .edu) pairing Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) with western sustainable agriculture science. She is also a writer, consilience researcher, artist, mother, and an advocate for broadening narratives that amplify the voices of farmers and minorities. Jasmine Neosh is a proud member of the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin. She is also a two-time Tribal College graduate and a first-generation college student, having obtained both her Associate degree in Natural Resources (2019) and her Bachelor of Arts degree in Public Administration (2022) from College of Menominee Nation. In addition to her schoolwork, Jasmine has served as a long-time intern, collaborator, and student researcher at CMN’s renowned Sustainable Development Institute and as a Student Ambassador for the American Indian College Fund. In 2019, she was named CMN Student of the Year. Previously, she has been an Undergraduate Fellow for the Northeast Climate Adaptation Science Center, the Holly Youngbear Tibbets Sustainability Fellow, and the only undergraduate in the inaugural cohort of Forge Project Fellows (New York). Currently, Jasmine serves as a host of the Indigenous Speakers Series (University of Washington-Tacoma). As of Fall 2022, she will be a Juris Doctorate student at the University of Michigan Law School. Pah-tu Pitt (Warm Springs/Wasco Tribal Member) holds Environmental Graduate and undergraduate degrees, believes strongly in climate resiliency efforts, sustainable economic development via Just Transition, justice and prevention for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives, and culturally relevant education opportunities. At University of Washington Tacoma, she has taught courses that center Native contributions and experiences using teaching methods that build community and relationship to place. She has extensive background and experience in Environmental Science, small business, policy, management, and community engagement. Their small business, Native Kut, includes creating art, consulting, and an artist guesthouse with a Native arts theme. Through arts, she brings in themes that align to her advocacy work such as climate justice. She is the parent of Wilx Anayak and spends a lot of time outdoors with family. Hōkūlani Rivera is a Kanaka Maoli woman from Pauoa Valley, Oʻahu, with ancestral roots from South Kona, Hawaiʻi to Hanalei, Kauaʻi. Having grown

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up in her homelands, she has had the often-shared experience of learning and unlearning colonial narratives in order to reconnect with nohona Hawaiʻi. Since departing Oʻahu for the continental U.S., Hōkūlani has had a foot in two worlds, having attended Western Washington University as an undergraduate, and cultivating her traditional connections in her personal life with the love and support of her Indigenous relatives. Today, she is an elementary educator, a poʻe hula, an Indigenous Education graduate student attending Arizona State University, and a host for the Indigenous Speaker Series. Melissa Watkinson-Schutten is the Equity and Environmental Justice Manager at the Puget Sound Partnership where she leads the Equity and Environmental Justice Team and manages the implementation of the Healthy Environments for All (HEAL) Act. She is a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation and also descends from the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. Melissa has a master’s degree in policy studies from the University of Washington Bothell. Melissa considers the Salish Sea her home, where she works to ensure equitable, inclusive, and healthy access to the marine environment and workforce. Much of her work has included applying social science methods and Indigenous methodologies in partnership with WA tribes to better understand the potential impacts and adaptation measures of climate change. Drew Slaney is a member of the Nez Perce Tribe, and current graduate student at Western Washington University’s Environmental Studies Program. His research is focused on how epistemologies influence the development, assessment, and overall value of outdoor stewardship and leadership programs developed for Native youth. Currently, Drew works as the Tribal Affairs Liaison for the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest where he works to create and support meaningful relationships between the Forest and Indigenous communities through Native youth engagement, integrating Indigenous history within community engagement curriculum, and recreation management research. Bill Thomas, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), is senior advisor for Islands, Indigenous, and International Issues for NOAA’s Office for Coastal Management. A 30 year veteran of NOAA with 12 years of working in the administration of the University of Hawai‘I (UH), Bill has had breadth of leadership experiences spanning academia and the federal government. From 1980–1990, he directed research projects and programs for the National Marine Sanctuary Program and National Estuarine Research Reserve System in addition to developing protected areas across the U.S., including its territories. As the special assistant to the Vice Presidents for Academic Affairs and University Relations (1990–2002) at the UH, he worked with faculty,

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staff, the university president, state legislature, and Hawai‘i’s governors to develop academic and research programs and resources to support the UH. Beginning in 2002 he led the development and establishment of NOAA’s first regional office for its Ocean Services, formed Pacific Risk Management ‘Ohana (2003—a multi-agency, cross-sectoral, international group of risk management providers dedicated to collaborative disaster risk-reduction), served as the U.S. Representative to the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission’s Sub-Commission for the Western Pacific (2003–2004), organized the President’s Ocean Policy Task Force’s Pacific regional stakeholder engagement for the development of the U.S. National Ocean Policy (2005), helped the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency to establish the National Disaster Preparedness Training Center at the UH (2009–2012), leads NOAA’s engagement with US Tribal Colleges and Universities as well as other tribal and indigenous communities throughout the U.S. and the Pacific, and serves as the NOAA Office for Coastal Management’s lead on issues dealing with climate and national security. Daniel Wildcat, PhD, is a Yuchi member of the Muscogee Nation of Oklahoma. His service as teacher and administrator at Haskell spans 36 years. In 2013 he was the Gordon Russell visiting professor of Native American Studies at Dartmouth College. Dr. Wildcat received an interdisciplinary PhD from the University of Missouri at Kansas City. In 1994 he partnered with the Hazardous Substance Research Center at Kansas State University to create the Haskell Environmental Research Studies (HERS) Center to facilitate: (1) technology transfer to tribal governments and Native communities, (2) transfer of accurate environmental information to tribes, and (3) research opportunities to tribal college faculty and students throughout the United States. He is the author and editor of several books: Power and Place: Indian Education In America, with Vine Deloria Jr.; Destroying Dogma: Vine Deloria’s Legacy on Intellectual America, with Steve Pavlik; and His book, Red Alert: Saving the Planet with Indigenous Knowledge, suggests Indigenous ingenuity—Indigenuity—is required to reduce the environmental damage in the Anthropocene. He is a co-author of the Southern Great Plains chapter of the Fourth National Climate Assessment.