Cha-Das-Ska-Dum Whichtalum, recently deceased tribal elder of the Lummi Tribe

I was born at the foot of Mt. Baker.  Most of the places where we used to practice our beliefs don’t even exist anymore.  Those places are gone.  They’ve been turned up, rolled over, developed.  In their place are ballparks, housing projects and shopping centers.

Preserving tradition means nurturing it.  It’s like having a Volkswagen.  If something goes wrong with it, you don’t take it to a Cadillac dealer, you take it to a Volkswagen dealer.  It’s still a car, but there are certain places you go to fix it.

It’s the same with our spirit.  Each of us is an individual, and we each have a different kind of power.  And we have to go to the source of that power to “repair” it or to nourish it along.  If that particular place no longer exists, then we have to go in search of another. We shouldn’t have to do that. 

For some places that are meaningful for our people, it’s too late.  There are still sacred places left, but they are increasingly further and further from home.  When winter is upon us and there’s snow on the ground, it is very treacherous to travel so far to keep our practices.  Today, we have to drive 65 miles from the Lummi reservation to reach the nearest sacred pool in the mountains; and it’s the same distance to our fasting and questing places.

The places the timber industry are clear cutting are the places our ancestors have been using for traditional practices or ceremonies for thousands of years . . .  places we use today, until they are destroyed. 

We try to explain that to the people who are logging them.  We have a right to say how the land is used.  We still consider ourselves the landlords of this place.   We’ve never accepted any money for it.  Lummi people have been offered money, but we’ve turned it down.

We say, “How can anyone own the land?  How can anyone own the rivers? How can anyone own the trees?  If you die, you can’t put it in your grave with you — so, therefore, it’s not yours.  You can only put into your grave what belongs to you. 

I don’t know how they can put mountains, rivers, valleys, waterfalls, lakes, old-growth timber and all the medicine plants into the grave with them.  They can’t.   So it’s not theirs.  We’re not saying it’s ours; we're saying it belongs to the people, to all the people, and the land should be left as is.  Because one day my great grandchildren will have to go to the library to look at old-growth timber.

The breath of Mother Earth is called

sah-laugh-woun