"We're still in recovery mode. So many decades have passed. So many generations of salmon have passed, and we're still trying to recover from that."
Featuring:
Ken Workman (Duwamish), 5th generation Great-Grandson of Chief Seattle.
Warren King George (Muckleshoot), historian, Muckleshoot Indian Tribe
Owen Oliver (Quinault / Isleta Pueblo) https://owenloliver.com/
Lydia Sigo (Suquamish), geoduck diver
You know the history of the ship canal, don’t you?
Saltwater Soundwalk SHORT
Ken Workman (Duwamish): Oh by the way, you know the history of the Ship Canal, don’t you? The Ship Canal goes in, in 1916. And in the construction of the Ship Canal, Lake Washington was lowered nine feet.
[sounds of plainfin midshipman grunt and hum]
Owen Oliver (Quinault / Isleta Pueblo): Nine feet. And there’s stories of people were sinking in their canoes.
Warren King George (Muckleshoot): Well, engineers made some vast changes, irreversible changes, to Lake Washington and Lake Union, and the Cedar River and the Black River.
Ken: The Black River was dried up.
Archie Cantrell (Puyallup): [Speaks in Twulshootseed]
Owen: We knew that it would affect all our salmon.
Warren: One of the impacts, one of the many impacts of diminishing the flow of the Black River, is they eliminated virtually all of the fish runs that used that route, virtually wiping out that whole system.
Owen: Back then people didn’t like salmon. The settlers called it dirty Indian food.
Archie: [Speaks in Twulshootseed]
Warren: Well, we're still in recovery mode, you know. So many decades have passed. So many generations of salmon have passed, and we're still trying to recover from that.
Archie: [Speaks in Twulshootseed]
Warren: You know, I mean, I totally understand the concept or the objective about commerce and the value of commerce…
Archie: [Speaks in Twulshootseed]
Warren: …But in doing so, the king salmon, the sockeye salmon, the humpy or pink salmon, the silver salmon, the steelhead; all those anadromous fish that utilize that system were wiped out, or were forced to find a different home.
Archie: [Speaks in Twulshootseed]
Warren: And we, as Native Americans, totally understand that phrase or that concept of finding another home.
[00:01:52] Ken: The Black River was dried up. The last of the Duwamish were living on the Black; were run off their land. Their river was dried up. And so we couldn’t live down there anymore. And so of course it didn’t matter because these were just Indians, Duwamish Indians living down there. Seattle is an engineered city. And so all of this stuff is connected and the irony is, it only happened yesterday. It’s not like you know, it was a long time ago and get over it. It all just happened yesterday.
Lydia: We have been here.
Owen: What I like to tell people is that the Denny Party landed on Alki in 1851, and within four years all that treaty land was already parceled up. That was in four years. That was my undergraduate career at UW—four years. It worked that fast, that Native people in the Salish Sea and around are already seen as objects. That we can move these people. We can restrict these people to reservations. And once we’re moved, it’s not our traditional territories.
Lydia: We have been here since the ice age.
[sounds of plainfin midshipman grunting]
[00:03:23]