The 2023–24 academic year brought new opportunities and deepened relationships among the Indigenous Rights and Environmental Sustainability project’s students, faculty, and community partners. During the summer and fall of 2023, we brought two new University of Washington School of Marine and Environmental Affairs (UW SMEA) graduate students onto the project: Thor Belle and Kayley Pingeon. During these seasons, we spent time filming various participants of the Fish Wars (a 1960s-70s-era series of protests and efforts, led by Native American Tribes in the Puget Sound area, pressuring the US government to recognize Native fishing rights), especially those who participated in a famous battle at Frank’s Landing in March 1965.
Recently graduated UW SMEA student and former UWCHR student researcher Jessica Rose helped to edit these interviews into a few short videos that we have shown at various events, including at the World Fisheries Conference held in Seattle in March 2024, where Patrick Christie, Binah McCloud, and Hanford McCloud gave a joint presentation on the Fish Wars and their impact on co-management in the Pacific Northwest. Additionally, Jonathan Warren presented the interviews in an Indigenous Politics and Indigenization in the Pacific Northwest micro-seminar he taught to Indigenous Brazilians in Brasilia.
We are excited to collaborate with UW and Chief Leschi Schools students working on establishing two food forests—one on the campus of Chief Leschi Schools and the other near the Nisqually Cultural Center and Billy Frank National Estuary.
As fall and winter of 2024 approached, we switched gears. With generous funding from the UW EarthLab, we are excited to collaborate with UW and Chief Leschi Schools (CLS) students working on establishing two food forests—one on the campus of Chief Leschi Schools and the other near the Nisqually Culture Center and Billy Frank National Estuary. The focus of the project has multiple layers. By engaging students in food forest creation and stewardship we hope to support and enhance existing Tribal health and wellness initiatives, particularly in relation to climate change and Native and non-Native youth; foster educational ties between Indigenous youth and elders; deepen understandings of native plants for medicinal, culinary, and other purposes; and braid Traditional Ecological Knowledge and science in plant and site selection. Food forest planting events will be filmed to capture the collaboration between CLS and UW students and teachers. It will be shown at UW, CLS, and Nisqually Tribal headquarters to raise awareness about Tribal leadership and the potential for intercultural collaborations. We are in the process of seeking additional funding from the US Geological Survey.
Wrapping up the academic year, in spring 2024 we focused on preparing for the food forest project, which will begin in summer 2024. In addition, with funding from the Nisqually Tribe, we continued working on the Fish Wars film—figuring out details such as processing with our Coast Salish partners about the film’s direction and which additional footage we would like to shoot. We look forward to completing and sharing the film in the near future.
This update is featured in UWCHR’s 2023-2024 Annual Report.
