Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut and the Lummi Nation (Lhaq'temish)- a story of kinship, relationship, family, connection and justice

My name is Nick Nesbitt and I am presently located in Collingwood, Ontario, the traditional land of the Petun, Anishinabewaki, Huron-Wendat, and Mississauga. Throughout my writing, I do not intend to speak on behalf of BIPOC communities but will use my voice to bring attention to matters that disproportionately affect underserved communities, lands, and people. I want to acknowledge my own privileges as a settler in what is currently Canada and emphasize my commitment to Etuaptmumk (Two-Eyed Seeing). My goal as an ally is to reduce environmental injustices by encouraging just action and demanding political accountability. I want to mention ‘The Dish with One Spoon’ treaty (created to promote peace and sharing) to highlight that we all share the same land. It is our collective responsibility to ensure this dish is never empty through respecting, honouring, and protecting the land and all life that it is home to.

Introduction

It is not completely uncommon for people to feel a deep connection with Nature. I do. And I believe I can speak for all of my colleagues at the Earth Law Center in saying, we do. After all, as humans, we are part of Nature, part of the Animal Kingdom. Unfortunately though, over the course of history, especially Western history, there has been this attempt to remove humans from Nature, to place humans above Nature, to control Nature, and to profit from Nature. And what has this led to? Ecosystem degradation on unprecedented scales, climate change, species loss, and the list goes on and on. However, one facet of this gross assault on Nature that often flies under the radar is our own intraspecies abuses. Abuses that come in the form of cultural genocide. Abuses, by which human beings have been stripped of their way of understanding and connecting to the world around them.

In June, ELC announced our partnership with two members of the Lummi Nation, Squil-le-he-le (Raynell Morris) and Tah-Mahs (Ellie Kinley); a partnership that aims to bring Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut (also known as Tokitae or her stage name, Lolita) home to the Salish Sea. 50 years ago, Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut was captured violently, and without the prior consent of her family (her mother Ocean Sun is still alive in the Salish Sea). She was placed in a small tank and has been performing shows for profit ever since. And while the release of Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut would be justice for her, it would also be for justice for Lummi Nation (Lhaq'temish), because at the heart of this matter lies a great disconnect between culture and law that must be rectified. This blog delves further into the indigenous aspect of this campaign.

"We're at a time when we all need healing," Tah-Mas added. "We're all family, qwe'lhol'mechen and Lummi people. What happens to them, happens to us."

The Lhaq'temish, “The Lummi People”

The Lummi Nation is a Native American tribe of the Coast Salish ethnolinguistic group in the Pacific Northwest region of Washington state in what is currently the United States. And to put it simply, the Lummi Nation holds a worldview that regards plants, animals, springs and trees as thinking and feeling beings that are sacred. Their human-Nature connection is one that understands and views Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut as a member of their family. What better way to learn more about them than from their own words:

Jewell James and Doug James, Jr. Lummi tribal members

We are the Lhaq'temish, “The Lummi People”. We are survivors of the great flood. With a sharpened sense of resilience and tenacity we carry on. We pursue the way of life that our past leaders hoped to preserve with the rights reserved by our treaty. We will witness and continue to carry on our Sche langen. We are fishers, hunters, gatherers, and harvesters of nature’s abundance and have been so since time immemorial. We are the original inhabitants of Washington's northernmost coast and southern British Columbia known as the Salish Sea and the third largest Tribe in Washington State serving a population of over 5,000. We are one of the signatories to the Point Elliot Treaty of 1855. We are a fishing Nation and for thousands of years we have worked, flourished and celebrated life on the shores and waters of the Salish Sea. In 1855 our ancestors signed the Point Elliot Treaty ceding lands to the United States government in exchange for our Reservation lands and guarantees to retain the rights to hunt, fish, and gather at our usual and accustomed grounds and stations and traditional territories. We have exercised these rights since time immemorial and intend to maintain these rights for our children into perpetuity. We are a Sovereign Nation and Self-Governing Nation...

We understand the challenge of respecting our traditions while making progress in a modern world. We know we must listen to the wisdom of our ancestors, to care for our lands and waterways, to educate our children, to provide family services, and to strengthen our ties with the outside community. We continue to invest in our tribal economic development and training our people to use the most modern technologies available while staying attentive to our tribal values. We envision our homeland as a place where we enjoy an abundant, safe, and healthy life in mind, body, society, environment, space, time, and spirituality where all are encouraged to succeed and none are left behind.

The commitment to ‘leave none behind’ aligns with the immediacy of this issue. As Tah-Mas explains, "Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut was taken from her family and her culture when she was just a child, like so many of our children were taken from us and placed in Indian boarding schools. Reuniting her with her family, reuniting her with us, helps make us all whole.”

A deep relationship with orcas

Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut belongs to L-pod. She belongs to the Salish Sea. She belongs to herself: she has the inherent right to be home and to be free. But, as Tah-Mahs brings to light, she also belongs to the Lummi Nation’s larger sense of family.

The Lummi term for “orca”, qwe’Ihol’mechen, translates literally to “our relations under the waves.” Like this, Lummi tradition acknowledges blackfish as kin and a cultural keystone species. Cultural keystone species are species of exceptional significance to a culture or a people and can be identified by their prevalence in language, cultural practices, traditions, diet, medicines, material items, and histories of a community. In effect, such a species influences social systems and culture and is a key feature of a community’s identity. As a cultural keystone species, the Lummi people and the qwe’Ihol’mechen have shared deep spiritual connections, kinship bonds, and cultural affinity since time immemorial. Thus, Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut belongs to the Lummi people as both a family member and as the embodiment of necessary cultural and spiritual weight and meaning.

Sadly, on August 8th, 1970, Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut was captured alongside approximately 80 other Orcas at Penn Cove, Washington. From that day on, the South Salish Sea orcas' place, as a cultural keystone species, was put into jeopardy. And the traumatic events of that day in 1970 are still being felt to this day. “They were herded in by dynamite and underwater explosions, into a cove, and they took whale after whale.” Residents of Penn Cove remember “the haunting sounds of the screams of the killer whales.” You can watch the video of Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut’s capture here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUlbZifjoqo.

Last year Squil-le-he-le and Tah-Mahs, two Lummi members, sent a letter to the Miami Seaquarium, Palace Entertainment, and Grupo Parques Réunidos (the owners of the Seaquarium) asserting that Sk'aliCh'elh-tenaut qualifies to be returned to her native home based upon the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), a federal law that requires the return of certain Native American "cultural items.” To no avail, their pleas have been ignored. Their beliefs have been disregarded. And while it seems odd that they have to do this in the first place, the disappearance of cultural items, and such disregard for Indigenous culture and worldview in western society and legal systems, unfortunately, is not uncommon.

A disconnect between culture and law

In speaking about bison and a similar biocultural atrocity, Dr. Leroy Little Bear, a respected Kainai elder, Blackfoot scholar, a professor emeritus at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta and an Officer of the Order of Canada notes that “[T]he disappearance of iconic symbols in a society means the beginning of the disappearance of a culture… Imagine what would happen to Christians if all Christian crosses and churches were gone. The disappearance of the buffalo had a similarly devastating effect on our people. Our youth now hear our buffalo songs, stories, and watch our ceremonies, but they do not see the buffalo roaming around.”

As an experiment: Reflect on your lifestyle, or way of life, the people and things that you would not be whole without. What makes you, you? Now imagine you are no longer able to perform that activity, see your loved one or that trait or object is taken from you. How do you feel?

The essence of the Lummi way of knowing, doing and being is based on the interrelatedness and interdependence of humans and Nature. A number of Indigenous nations and allies have been working on reviving the Orca population in the Salish Sea, to restore the human-orca biocultural landscape and revive the culture-Nature connection. However, by allowing Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut to remain in captivity, the American legal system is failing both Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut and the Lummi People. And this is because the American legal system understands Nature, not for what it is, a complex and well-organized system of finite character, but instead, as a source of endless profit and growth potential.

To better understand how American environmental laws evolved to protect extraction and consumption as opposed to life and cultural understandings of the world, one must look to the conservation ethic developed at the turn of the 20th century, by the first chief of the U.S. Forest Service, Gifford Pinchot. Pinchot, wrongly asserted that water, land, forests, air, soil, and wildlife are “resources” or “wealth” to be extracted, manipulated and controlled for human benefit. Such conceptions spread far and wide and became the guiding principle for human-nature interaction in the United States. And thus, America’s environmental laws, built on Pinchot’s ideological framework, developed into an elaborate network of permits and regulations that “control” uses, to treat the symptoms of accompanying environmental deterioration only just enough to avoid inconvenient, short-term, human impacts.

Indeed, Pinchot’s ideology prevailed, and under American environmental laws ecosystems’ needs, and collective long-term requirements, have become mere afterthoughts. But not for everyone. No. Instead, Indigenous people’s have remained steadfast in maintaining that the environment has intrinsic value on its own. And hence, Indigenous peoples have been on the frontlines fighting to rectify the weakness in current law that is allowing or at least not preventing deteriorating environmental conditions of ecosystems.

The reunification of family and life

In 2018, Jay Julius, Chairman of the Lummi Nation released the following statement when declaring the Lummi Nation’s intention to bring Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut home to the Salish Sea: "Tokitae’s [Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut] story is more than a story of a whale. Her story is the story of the Native peoples of this country who have been subjected to bad policies. Because of the failure of policymakers to protect our wildlife, she was stolen from her family 47 years ago and taken to the Miami Seaquarium. Because she is a relative of the Lummi people, it is our sacred obligation to bring her safely home to the Salish Sea.”

Today, two-years later, Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut remains a captive of the Miami Seaquarium. But more broadly, a captive of western society. A captive of a society that allowed her to be stolen, traded, treated inhumanely, and prostituted for financial gain. And to this end, she is representative of the lasting effects of a colonialism that decimated both Indigenous and Orca communities. And she is symbolic of the struggles endured by Indigenous communities everywhere, but especially the struggles of the Lummi Nation who believe that it’s their sacred duty to protect the lands, waters, and communities of the Salish Sea.

Earth Law Center feels it is our moral and ethical obligation to provide legal representation to Squil-le-he-le and Tah-Mahs, who are working to fulfil their Xa xalh Xechnging (sacred obligation). It is therefore our task to work across cultures and borders, to heal the ecosystems, the economies, and communities of all those who now call this place home. We are committed to protecting the lifeways and culture of Lummi, and honouring the larger ecosystem of which we’re all apart.

The Miami Seaquarium’s failure to return her to the Salish Sea implicates their rights as Native Americans under US law and their rights as Indigenous peoples under international law (particularly the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples).

Our message to the Miami Seaquarium and their parent companies, Palace Entertainment, the Spain-based leisure park operator Parques Reunidos, and the Swedish-based global investment organization EQT, is that allowing Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut to remain in captivity is entirely incompatible with supporting Indigenous rights. We ask all of these companies to listen to Indigenous voices, which have long known what many are only beginning to realize: that Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut and all life on our planet has inherent value and rights that we must respect. The era of corporate exploitation of nature and of Indigenous communities must come to an end. It is not too late for these companies to do the right thing and to cross over into the right side of history. The Lummi people, as family members, know what is best for Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut, and we must listen.

On September 24th we jointly held a virtual event on the 50th anniversary of Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut’s arrival at the Seaquarium. You can watch the event here, which includes ceremonies sent from Indigenous peoples worldwide in solidarity.

Squil-le-he-le and Tah-Mahs and Samuel (Seminole Tribe) performing ceremony outside MSQ

JOIN US!

Collective support for this campaign has been growing for decades; over 20 petitions have been launched over time to bring home Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut, with collective signatures at over 615,000 people. Countless others support this campaign in spirit. The global community is calling for the release of Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut based on her own inherent rights, Indigenous rights, and other legal and moral justifications.

Anyone can sign and share the petition.

We are asking indigenous leadership to stand in solidarity with Squil-le-he-le and Tah-Mahs by publicly signing onto this letter. This living document will be submitted to the Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Donate today to support our legal work.