This interview aired on KYRS on October 8, 2018 and the audio will soon be available in the Praxis archive.
Taylor Weech (TW): Today, at least in Spoakne and many other cities, is Indigenous People’s Day, and I wanted to bring in a panel of powerful indigenous women to talk with me today to celebrate that. So i’m here so far in the studio with Ingrid Sub Cuc and Melodi Wynn and we are going to be joined in a little bit by either one or two more guests so stay tuned for that. Welcome to the show. I don’t know who wants to start but I’d love to hear a little bit about who you are, where you’re from.
Melodi Wynne (MW): I’m Melodi Wynn, a citizen of the Spokane tribe. I live here in Spokane within the traditional boundaries of the Spokane tribe and thank you for inviting me I look forward to today.
Ingrid Sub Cuc (ISC): Hello, good afternoon, buenas tardes, Xqaqi’j ri’wano jel, my name is Ingrid Sub Cuc, I am indigenous Mayan, Kaqchikel and Q’eqchi, my family has been in Spoakne for about 15 years. I was born and raised in Guatemala, lived half my life there and half my life here.
TW: I guess that kind of brings me to a really foundational point, to what indigeneity means, obviously Melodi you’re here on your land, that is yours, and [Ingrid] you’re indigenous and transplanted here. I don’t know if either of you want to kick that off, just what that idea means?
ISC: It’s a very interesting question talking about what does being indigenous mean and indigeneity. I think for myself defining what it means to be an indigenous person and mostly and indigenous woman is the way that I was brought up and my language, my culture, my traditions, the very traditional indigenous communities in Guatemala. Colonization happened a little bit differently in Latin America than it did in North America so both were extremely devastating for our communities, but we were never placed in a system of reservations so our communities continued to live on ancestral land even though we have technically no sovereignty as nations. But as that, we have been able to preserve a lot of our languages and traditions because we’ve been so isolated from a lot of the initiatives of colonization that have really focused on assimilation and basically washing our culture out. So to be indigneous especially in this time of history is so complicated because you have so many generations of indigenous people that have gone through so much change that now even looking at my grandmother’s generation and myself— where my grandmother only spoke her indigenous language, never went to school and barely wore shoes until she was I don’t know, her 30’s?, and myself being able to speak three different languages, have achieved by western standards, all this education, it still means I’m indigenous. And I think that’s something we will continue to redefine as time goes on because we’re also seeing a lot of people move back and kind of reconcile that as their identity.
MW: I guess all I could really add to that really eloquent explanation, thank you, is that being of the land and for the land and from the land—thats what our people— here in this area have been here since time immemorial and we have a relationship that encompasses all of that and then into the future too. So you know that’s what makes us indigenous. I really am grateful that you included the language in that, because the land, this place, knows our language and our stories and our knowledges and everything so you know we have got kind of access to who we are and who our ancestors are. I think we are pleased to share that when someone is willing to listen.
TW: That question of sharing is kind of a prime question because we’re here, now. You know, oh…we’re about to be joined by Diane as well so I’m going to put my question on pause. Sorry to throw you right onto the mic, but do you want to just briefly introduce yourself, talk about who you are and where you’re from?
Diane Covington (DC): Hello I’m Diane Covington, I’m an artist, I’m Colville and Spokane tribes, I came from the rez, and not used to driving in the city, went around the block a couple times, I’m out of breath but I’m glad I made it now I know where to come. Thank you.
TW: and we were just talking, if you could share just a little bit, we were talking about the question of indigeneity and being indigenous and what the core of that is for you and what you want people who aren’t perhaps to understand about that?
DC: To begin with, happy Indigenous People’s Day! I think that’s pretty cool it’s not like this everywhere, some days it’s Columbus day and they’re having lots of sales on all kinds of stuff. I don’t know…I know that I’ve been acutely aware of some kind of something going on since I was little cause I’m not full Indian, I’m half Indian and half Irish so ever since I was little I’ve been aware that one side of my family was different from the other side, so I don’t know, it’s a big question and I don’t really know the answer, but I’m glad were exploring it here.
TW: Yeah I’m really glad all of you could be here cause you aall have a different part of the spectrum. So obviously we’re here now, in 2018, a lot of terrible things have happened starting with if you want to start with Columbus’ arrival which some people are commemorating today as you said, and here we are now, so how does it look to begin to repair those relationships? To repair the settler culture’s relationships to the land and to indigenous people? What does that look like for each of you?
MW: I guess I’d prefer to pose that question to the settlers. I would prefer to answer it from the indigenous place so i’lll let someone else start after that.
DC: I know in Canada they talk, they’re going through a thing and I don’t know much about it, but reparations. there’s another word i can’t think of…for one thing, I just recently became I don’t know what the word is, like I fessed up to only being half Indian, thats how i think of it, i’m only half Indian. So I benefit from white entitlement sometimes especially because I grew up all over the place away from the reservation, got a little bit of school, so my dad taught us how to go act in the city and how to use big words and how to quote unquote “pass” and because I’m half, people have been unsure, I’ve had people come up and speak Spanish to me and strangely i always felt bad that i didn’t know how to answer which is weird…
TW: so maybe just like, fessing up, being honest about what our historical relationships with each other are and what they mean now?
DC: That’s what I was going to say, I have had the unique viewpoint of seeing what it’s like for my dad as a dark skinned man in the world and being around my white mom who had a different experience in society so I learned from my mom and I can go out there and pass sometimes and then other times, heres another thing about it, because I’ve been through the constant micro-aggressions, and we’re wounded you know, so sometimes I go “am I just being too sensitive or are they really…”? So sometimes it’s hard to decipher is that person really being overtly ugly or am I too acutely sensitive to that kind of stuff?
ISC: I would say when we talk about reconciling a lot of our history what we’re missing is humility as a country. I don’t speak only as the United States but someone who grew up in Guatemala too, I say as a county in Guatemala and so many other countries that have had this history and still have a lot of indigenous presence, to have the humility to accept that is part of our history and accept there was a lot of wrong done to our communities and there is a lot of trauma and hurt and so much that has been dismissed about us as a people so that we can move forward. Because in this current age that we’re at we’re not as isolated anymore and we are having to interact and we do have people who are no longer just marrying within their indigenous tribes or communities, but they’re marrying other people from other parts of the world. And what tends to happen is that struggle to say what identity do I identify with and how do I reconcile this If I’m white and I’m indigenous and it’s something that I myself am having to think as an indigenous woman who is married to a white man. One of the things that comes into my decision of whether I want to have kids because how do I communicate that if this world is still not talking about reconciliation and reparations between our cultures?
MW: So we have honesty and humility and I guess I would add hospitality. The Spokane tribe was known for its hospitality and if we stay true to who we are then we hold to that value. but the honestly and the humility from the settlers around us and from ourselves too in dealing with our issues would start that process.
TW: And so last week I was having a completely separate conversation with a guest and he was talking about the influence of Christian thought on our culture and we ended up talking about colonization as part of that because it’s— the stories are intertwined— and he characterized, and he’s a white guy, Jewish guy, he characterized indigeneity as being about place, fundamentally, that it’s not about time or linear space, its about a place and what happens there. So how do you think we can start in this world we’re in right now to center place more? What would that look like? For people who aren’t used to thinking that way or even who are who want to marry it into their daily life more?
DC: I’m not really sure I understand your question. I know that place is a big part of it and coming here today I was thinking about all the indigenous people the Earth over and the movement, the resurgence that’s going on right now the Earth over— the people in New Zealand, native people everywhere. And it is about place, I’ve been learning some of the Spokane tribal history. I used to magically cut off in my mind, ‘ok this is the reservation, this is where the Indians are, this is the city, this is where the non indians are, this is Canada, that’s where the lines drawn’. And the Canadian line crossed several tribes across the U.S. and Canada so there are tribal peoples on both sides of the line and so… we moved around and we crossed that imaginary line and now that it’s there we can’t cross it anymore. It’s just strange…strange.
MW: So I guess if we had a seat at the table, around making decisions for land use, an authentic seat at the table, not a token seat, we could start to inform and maybe to experience, people could start to then witness how we interact with the land, how we think about it, how we want for it and then they would become —you know— that much closer to being educated about what it means. And a lot of people get it just because they’re connected enough in their heart and mind and gut. They get it, but not everyone does obviously, you can look out the window here. *gesturing toward downtown Spokane*
(laughter)
TW: I actually just found today a really good resource on this because I saw, there’s been a lot of good, in my social media world, which is you know not everyone’s, but I’ve seen a lot of good informative Indigenous People’s Day posts today. And someone shared this map at native-land.ca and it’s a mostly user generated map and you can zoom in and look at territory, language, and you can see exactly how— what Diane was saying— it sprawls across the U.S. / Canada border, the U.S. / Mexico border, the state lines, so yeah it’s a great resource. And I guess I can just say that I’m trying to overlay the map in my mind of the KYRS signal territory, but if you’re listening you’re either in Spokane, Palouse, Coeur d’Alene, possibly Yakima, Kalispel, Okanagan, Nez Perce land. …I want to circle back to something Melodi just said about having a seat at the table, an authentic seat I think you said, which kind of comes to the question of power and rebalancing power and you know decolonizing all of our systems our government, etc. what does that power look like to each of you?
ISC: That’s a great question, I think it’s something we as indigenous people have been having to learn how to do, I would even start there. In Guatemala we still have a lot of traditional ancestral government and leadership, but its not respected.
There is one government and that’s the government that matters to our country and even though we have some representation in that government, often people that make it up there are people that lose a lot of themselves along the way because you’re having to learn things that do not come naturally in your culture. And it’s a very conflicting feeling to have to do that and of course we want to have more recognition and more rights and even just some reconciliation as people, but if we don’t have the leadership then we can’t really do it. Ideally would be to have our government systems respected and that we have true sovereignty over the decisions that we make and the things that are beneficial for our people, but simply we’re not seeing it. But I do think that we’re at a point in time where we are realizing all the damage that we have caused to our land and our world and it is no longer sustainable and we see there is so much research— I would say western research— that is going back and finding all these things about how we need to take care of the land, what education systems work, what government systems work, and all of them tend to go back to indigenous systems. And it’s as if it’s this big discovery. *laughs* Which sounds very familiar like Columbus discovering North America, America in general, but we are going back to that and the reason is that our systems have lasted for so long. These are systems that have been established over thousands of years and that have preserved so much of our culture and it must be because we are doing at least something right or trying to. So hopefully with all this new quote unquote research that they’re saying is very innovative that there’s more respect for indigenous points of view and worldview.
MW: I have looked back in the literature that does exist about us and power is really a sort of a different concept. If you go pre-colonial the only power that I’ve found referenced was the personal kind of power, to help your people, to take care of yourself, to take care of your people, to deliver on your purpose you brought for the people. After the fur traders showed up, that’s when the power over resources starts to show up. And the leadership that you mentioned, we just created some leadership curriculum and we delivered that to two groups this summer in cooperation with Washington State University and the tribal youth summer employment program and the Wellpinit school and the result was phenomenal. I could tell stories all day about those two camps but whenever we present that curriculum to outside organizations, they really see how different that is from the leadership curriculums they’ve encountered before and that tells us that we had something special and we still have the capacity to bring that forward into the future in a good way.
TW: Yeah that’s a little bit of what I was getting at in my brain, not in my mouth, with that question is how we’re in such an intense like domination style, power-over set up that, for me, it’s not part of my culture per se but my political persuasion is definitely power-with and a more horizontal, everyone using their personal power, kind of model and it seems daunting often to move that into this overwhelming system that we have.
DC: It does seem daunting and overwhelming and what helps me is this is a young country, Natives have been here for quite a while compared to how long this has been a country and the difference, like you were talking about, different structures and like there’s… I’m going to oversimplify and I don’t mean to… in the non-Native, theres one leader and it’s kind of, there are people underneath and with us it’s like a circle and I might have some art skills…xxxx…so I’m the leader of art and somebody else has medicine skills and they’re the leader so we all have our special skills and have leadership abilities and that’s a really healing thing. That’s not how I grew up. I’m a first generation English speaker on my dad’s side. He grew up speaking Indian, I grew up speaking English. It’s lost unless I go and really try to learn the language and I’ll probably still use some of it wrong, it’s that fast. It happened that fast, so what I’m saying is that things can happen fast so that gives me hope.
TW:…yeah and I guess on hope, what is the most… what’s inspiring you the most right now in terms of movements, things that individual indigenous people you know are doing, communities— your own community or around the world—what’s most inspirational to you in the recent past?
DC: Locally, that this is Indigenous People’s Day here in Spokane, the town named after the Spokane tribe, which really if we said it right, would be “Spo-can-ee”. So here we are and you know, I’m thinking of Kalamazoo, Michigan which is where iIlived before and that’s an Indian name and I’m thinking of all these places in the U.S. with Indian names so we can bring awareness that we’re still here and we’re… you might not see us without our feathers, but we’re here and we’re doing things and there’s a resurgence.
ISC: Yeah I would say so much. I spent two years working in Guatemala after I graduated here from Whitworth University, I went back because I really wanted to reconnect with my culture and my people and be back in my land and really find what was my passion. Because I just became so disillusioned with a lot of the education system here and, I mean, I just am so incredibly impressed by the resilience of our people and the courage and also just the incredible humility that we have as a people to continue to fight and want better and protect and love and that is something that is so inspirational. And I think it’s also a time where a lot of us for various reasons have had to leave our people, have had to leave our homes and move to other places and are still trying to hold on to our identity. For me, moving here I think really cemented my indigenous identity because it was just me and my family. So I had to learn as much as I could about my history and my people and preserve my language and preserve all these things because I was so afraid that I might lose it. Growing up in Latin America as an indigenous person you don’t learn that there are indigenous people in North America and still to this day I will tell my family back in Guatemala that there are indigenous people here and they’re like, “oh, that’s not possible” because they’ve never seen it and they’ve never learned that history. And so I really I think took it upon myself to do that, but one of the things that I see is that it’s not just me even though for a long time it felt like that, but there are so many other incredible indigenous and Mayan and Aztec and Incan descendants that are all over this continent and that are hanging on to their identity and really finding it and also fighting for better education around those systems and about our identities. So we are at a point in history where we are finally being taken seriously because by western standards we have made it, we have achieved, we have learned their language, we have learned their systems and now we can actually rewrite a lot of that history because so much of it has been written from a colonizing perspective. And now we’re here and we’re able to say, “that’s not how it happened and I can tell you that because I was on the other side of it.” So history has to be told on both sides to have a full picture and for 500 years that has not been the way we have seen history, so I think it is really helpful. And of course we have to fight for those seats, and we have to fight to have that voice, but I think a lot of us are very much at a point where we’re encouraged to do so and we feel so passionate and we’re going to go for it. And we are going for it so I think it is really hopeful to see that there are so many people doing it through the best way they can, whether through art, music, activism, all these different things, so I think it’s great.
MW: And that’s exactly what inspires me and gives me hope is the work. Like you said, we have artists in our community and we have young people who really engaged with that leadership curriculum and we have people even younger than that who are seeking knowledge on their own and gaining it just by that curiosity that young people have. And we have older people who are still engaged even though by all rights in our society in the U.S. they could be traveling the world or retired or something, but they’re remaining engaged in the work of decolonizing and indigenizing and preserving and teaching.
TW: Yeah, and that’s, I see it from my perspective, I’m seeing the people you’re talking about emerging as really strong voices and getting to hear from them, which is so valuable cause I was certainly not educated about anything about the place that I live before 150 years ago, you know? And even those 150 years were sterilized to say the least so what’s one thing in your history or that you wish was more broadly known? By the public at large? By white people? By non-indigenous people in general?
MW: Well I wish that more people realized that we thrived. There’s a narrative of starvation and just barely surviving, but our people thrived. That’s how we had art and how we had spirituality because we had time to do that even amidst the work that we were engaged with to gather from the land and to have that relationship with the land and with the yearly cycle and the monthly cycle and all that, we were still creating art and song and story and I wish more people would know about that narrative too.
ISC: Even that we’re still here as native people— I think starting there. I remember when I first moved to the United States and I would tell people that I’m Mayan they would be like, ‘whoa I thought the Mayans went extinct’ or died off, because there isn’t any history or education around that and the truth is, yeah, colonization happened, but we’re still here and as you mentioned we’re still thriving and we’re survivors and we’re here because we need to take care of this land and take care of our Mother Earth. And I think as long as we have that drive we will continue to be here despite the atrocities that have happened in the 500 years of colonization. We are still resisting, we are still here and we are still as strong as ever.
TW: Do any of you have any questions for each other? Just curious, no pressure.
DC: I guess I’ll mention…I grew up in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho and Spokane and so I didn’t grow up on the reservation, we grew up in Spokane with my grandma and every, I guess this time of year, I didn’t pay attention, but we’d have gatherings at the Indian Center and we’d have dances and we’d eat together and we’re doing that today after this…we’re going to do what we did in the old days. So we’re still carrying on those traditions and they might change a little bit, some things change, but basically I’m grandma-age now so I’m carrying on the things that my grandma did and thriving. I like that word.
TW: How does—this is a Diane question I guess—how does your art fit in to your identity as a whole?
DC: You know, I did not know that i did ‘Interior Salish women’ until my friend Shelly pointed it out which was obvious, but I lived in Michigan for quite a while I went to art school a little bit, a bunch of things happened in my life and I totally lost my art. For 10-15 years there was no art, I thought it was gone forever. Cut ahead 15 years and I went to Inchelium to the Colville rez to learn my language and the art— my art came back full force it’s just full force. So mostly what I do paint is in acrylic is Interior Salish women and Interior Salish and tribes— Spokane, Colville, Coeur d’Alene, Kailspel, Salish and Kootenai and that’s, I don’t know, I’m an artist cause I have trouble speaking, but its what I live for, it’s my passion. I would love to see, I just have a vision of this Spokane town. 200 years ago, our great great parents were right here fishing for salmon and digging camas and that is, to some people that’s ancient history. To me, it’s alive and real and right in front of my face here and I want to bring that vision here and I don’t know how, but it’s strong so hopefully in the next few years you’ll be seeing some Salish women around town.
TW: Thanks for making a talking exception for us today. *laughter* I guess with either of you [Ingrid and Melodi] how does your work tie in with your identity?
ISC: I would say that yeah, art has also been a really big part of my life and unfortunately as you were mentioning about going 10 years without doing that, I think I’m right about in that period of time. I remember learning so many things from traditional weaving to knitting to all these things from my grandmother and then my mother when we moved here as well and I used to draw and do a lot of these things that I really loved and then I think just with moving here and trying to find myself and also because I speak Spanish identifying as Latina, but having a struggle to identify as Native American because I didn’t really understand, I lost a lot of that and I actually haven’t done a lot of art in I would say about 8 years. But through that I think I also found my voice as a storyteller and as somebody who can really talk about not only my experience, but indigenous people’s in Latin America. I really love telling stories because one of the things that I really struggle with is writing and that’s something I’m not really comfortable with especially because English is my third language and I always have not a lot of confidence in my writing. When I have to write my story or my personal statement for school, all these different things it was such a panic because I just couldn’t do it, but I could say and I think being able to be an instrument for my community and my people, to be able to communicate who we are and what we are about in many different languages is something that I think I’ve found myself being very proud in and also reconciling my identity.
MW: I want to talk to you more about stories and storytelling for sure. I guess, I went back as a mature student to pursue education and I just finished that up this last May, so I’ve been, last winter just really immersed in trying to finish up that degree, do that kind of work. Since then I’ve just been paying attention to how people respond to the things that I have to offer because then how they respond I can use that to educate and also to lift up the younger people who are coming after us so they can be more empowered and connected in that way and have that kind of wellness that will keep moving us forward from the past, the good from the past.
TW: So this is primarily a show around action, hence the name, and activism so I would love to hear from each of you a little bit about what is an issue that you wish more people— that you want to invite listeners to become more aware of and involved in and active around?
ISC: I would say healthcare. That’s something that I’ve been really passionate about and specifically my grandmother was a medicine woman in our community and my mother has inherited that. So my passion for education, I wanted to be a doctor because I wanted to understand Western medicine because I also see the disturbance that it has done to our indigenous community in Guatemala. There’s so much mistrust in western medicine because of the history of that medicine on our people as well. And in Guatemala specifically we have still a very strong indigenous health system where a lot of us will access that before we will access western medicine, but it’s something that’s not understood and even people who go through that system of indigenous medicine don’t communicate that to their western doctor because of the repercussions of that. Because of being humiliated or the discrimination or all of that that comes with it. So I feel strongly about advocating for that and also respecting indigenous knowledge and health systems because they’ve existed for hundreds of thousands of years, but also that there is some good in western medicine and what can we do to reconcile that. Because the truth of the matter is that our people, especially in places like Guatemala, we live among each other and we are brothers and sisters and we share all this knowledge, but there’s still quite a separation with that. And again what’s fascinating to me as somebody who went through college with that goal of becoming a doctor is that a lot of the research that’s now being done on ways to practice medicine and how to honor all of that is going back to indigenous roots and systems. But for me it’s fascinating that there’s so little respect for traditional healers in our communities and so much for someone who graduates as an MD even though maybe they’re trying to go back and learn more indigenous medicine. So why isn’t there respect for both and why is there such a disrespect for our traditional healers? So I’m a big advocate for that— that needs to be known and respected and needs to be something people need to stop stealing…feeling they’re reinventing it or all of the sudden discovering it.
TW: So I’ll also welcome Shelly Boyd who just joined us. I was just asking about an issue around activism you wish people would get involved with either around indigenous issues or something close to you in general, but if you want to start by saying a little about who you are where you’re from, what your story is.
Shelly Boyd (SB):… so my name is Shelly Boyd, I’m from Inchelium, Washington, I’m a member of the Colville Confederated Tribes Arrow Lakes Band and xxxxx. And I think first I’d like to thank you for the invitation and just the topic and being able to sit here and listen to women who I respect and this point of view being looked at. I think that one of the things that is coming to light now on a larger level is the perspective that we have as indigenous people and beyond that, the perspective that we have as indigenous women and so thank you for the invitation and just, you know, providing a larger opportunity to speak about these things. I think if we were to talk about anything with me where my life has gone so far, I had— I guess we all have interesting lives— my life been almost typical for an indigenous woman, but it’s maybe unique to a non-indigenous woman. I had a child very young, I went ahead and went to college, I got my education and my Masters from Gonzaga. I worked as a school counselor for several years and one of the things on a personal level we start to address the things that hurt us most. And that’s pain and loss. And it took me a long time to realize and understand that it was our ways that were really the medicine for that— in our language, in our medicine, in our perspective which is unique I think. One of the things that I’m happy about is that right now I think the country is looking a little bit more at that. One of the sad things about that is that they’re looking at that because of what’s happening to us on a larger political level.
TW: …it’s the emergency solution that they’re looking for rather than preventative and holistic and so much of what indigenous systems and solutions look like. To me.
SB: I think that’s a great point. I don’t think it’s an emergency, I think it’s something that we’ve lived under for a long time, but its being looked at right now because everybody is having to deal with it. There’s no question about how women are looked at right now and even how the 99% is looking. One of the things that’s really struck me lately is a quote from Winona LaDuke where she talked about the 1% and how we always talk about the 1%, but we’re the 99% and it’s time for us to start acting like it.
TW: …so that ties into a lot of activist-y issues for people to jump onto right? Just those common denominator issues in general?
SB: Absolutely. One of the things I do right now, I’m a facilitator for the Colville tribe for the Arrow Lakes people. We were declared extinct in 1956. And people can look at that from a lot of different reasons. Why is anyone declared extinct? That’s somebody’s convenience and right now, one of the things I’m looking at— if we were looking at I guess, the Supreme Court and what’s going on there. In Canada right now, it is through the legal process that we are becoming acknowledged, that we are becoming…one of the things that justice is supposed to do is to be blind, except to the truth. And we have to follow that truth. And unless we make our justice system blind which right now, I guess the good thing is is we’re all looking at this, we’re all coming together, being the 99%. Maybe we’re being forced to be the 99% or to acknowledge that we’re the 99%, not forced to, we have been the 99%, but we’re definitely in a time that is hopeful in a different way. I think there’s never been a greater time in some ways that people are connecting, people are looking at the truth, people are talking about the truth, people like yourself are lending this platform to speak about some hard things on a hard day!
DC: I like the word emergency because emergence, emerge, it’s time to emerge. It is an emergency, I like that.
TW: Melodi or Diane, do you have an issue you want to lift up or invite people to act on?
DC: The only thing that comes to mind and I could probably talk about this for a long time is— you touched on a little bit— when people steal from us and then act like it was their idea…what’s the word…appropriation. That’s a big deal to me lately so that’s kind of… I’ll be doing some art about that rather than talking about it right now.
MW: I guess it would be called education in a way. Not education as far as like primary or secondary or post secondary, but it is that too, but for us to educate ourselves and each other about how to move forward. Taking what worked from the past and bringing it to this reality where we are in right now and moving through to where we want to be in a way that makes sense to us and that we have that power and that capacity to do that. That would be something I would like to invite others to talk more about. The listening that it takes to achieve that and the best way that I’ve found to get people to actually open up and listen is through story.
SB: You know one of the things that I think that, I don’t know how much you guys have talked about this, but is our water, of course. And the salmon, bringing back—there’s this saying ‘bring back the salmon and we’ll save the world’ and I really truly believe that. We’re going to have to look at some hard things, you know we were just down at the Snake River of course, looking at four dams that are basically decommissioned, but they’re left there keeping the salmon from going further. And, you know, I’ve heard people talk about climate change for instance in the way—there’s two ways: first it’s that real defeatist there’s nothing we can do anyway. The second is it’s just a money pit and we need to roll along. And so really the bottom line is that climate change, our water is the most important thing that everyone can look at right now or needs to look at and it’s not hopeless. It’s things we can do that might feel a little inconvenient in the moment, but it’s about showing up and voting, first, and then it’s about changing some things in your everyday life that are a little bit inconvenient or a lot depending on how far you push it. Depending on how much you want for your children and your grandchildren. But I think that the voice that we have here as indigenous women and as indigenous people goes back to that connection to the land. When we talk about our languages and the differences between our languages. It’s true there’s a commerce based language that is based on getting things and there is a land based language that is based on a connection to the land. So my second thing would be, learn another language. Learn an indigenous language. Learn to look at the world in a different way and it’s a powerful paradigm shift.
TW: …and we just have about a minute or two left, but if anyone has short things that people can do to acknowledge Indigenous People’s Day beyond today, let’s do more than one day a year. What’s one thing people can do?
MW: I’m going to say you can reach out to somebody and you can ask a question and not be afraid to make that connection. As an indigenous woman, I don’t know how many people come up to me and say, ‘I don’t want to offend you but I have this question.’ Ask the question, even if it’s offensive, and I promise I’ll tell you. And I just ask don’t get offended by the response.
ISC: I think always trying to be as inclusive as possible as well to remember that a lot of the struggles that we fight for are also an indigenous struggle. A lot of the things that I see sometimes as an indigenous woman is that we rally for women’s rights and we have thousands of women and other people who show up, and then we rally for— because I also identify as Latina— for immigration rights and that group gets a little smaller, and then we rally for indigenous people’s rights and then that group gets even smaller, and then when you even rally for indigenous women, and all the causes that we’re passionate about, it’s probably down to the four of us. *laughter* And where are all those people who we have been supporting along the way? So we need to really take a closer look at a lot of the initiatives that we support, with what intention are we doing those things, and who are we including in our struggle because I think we fail a lot of times in those things. I sometimes feel like I don’t have the option to ignore some of these struggles because they affect me at all these different levels, but also to check your privilege when it comes to those things that we all at some level experience some sort of privilege and to always keep that in mind because I think it’s really important.
MW: I would say get to know yourself so you can be in a place where you can listen and support.
DC: …and I just want to say happy Indigenous Day, Spokane.
TW: Great. Can we get that in a couple other languages?
DC: Sqelixw sxlxalt?
ISC: Matyox che’we, matyox.