"Erlands Point is an ancestral home for my family. When we were little, you could not walk out there without being squirted by a horse clam."
Featuring Randi Purser (Suquamish), tribal elder
It was like a barren wasteland, just plain mud
Saltwater Soundwalk SHORT
Randi Purser Smith (Suquamish): It is the water that supports all the life we seek to support and feed our families. Erlands Point is an ancestral home for my family. It is a site of a historical village of the Suquamish people. I am fortunate, and I think blessed, to have been born and raised there.
[Lushootseed Introduction]Randi Purser Smith
Erlands Point is an ancestral home for my family. When we were little, you could not walk out there without being squirted by a horse clam, and sand dollar herds seemed to move about everywhere out there. There was always a layer of weeds that rose up like a garden when the tide came in that hid cucumbers and starfish and spider crabs and the like, and we used to eat the mussels off the rocks out there. But today, plastic litters that whole stretch. And during a minus tide last summer, I was shocked to see such a drastic change from my childhood recollections. It was like a barren wasteland or desert, just plain mud. And I'm sad for my granddaughter in a way I'm sure our father was sad for us, seeing salmon dwindle right before our eyes. Our kids can't be raised in the same life that we were.
It is the water that supports all the life we seek to support and feed our families.
[Speaks in Lushootseed]
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