indigenous

by Ruby Cayenne

*Left: Speaker Brittani Orona who presented on Sept. 14 | Photo provided by Orona. Right: Speaker Kaitlin Reed who is presenting Oct. 12 | Photo provided by MARCOM*

Two additional speakers will take part in the Decolonizing Sustainability Speaker Series this fall. The first speaker was Brittani Orona on Sept.14, and the next speakers are professors Kaitlin Reed on Oct. 12 and Dana Loyd on Nov. 16. The in person events will be at the Native American Forum room BSS 162 at Cal Poly Humboldt from 5 – 6:30 p.m.

“The speaker series is really designed to kind of interrogate the centrality of settler colonialism and white supremacy in a lot of American environmental movements, both historically and in the present,” said Assistant NAS Professor and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) Faculty Fellow Kaitlin Reed. She is the main organizer of the series and an enrolled member of the Yurok Tribe.

Brittani Orona – September Highlights

Orona is University of California president’s postdoctoral fellow at UC Santa Cruz and serves as the Board Secretary for Save California Salmon, among many other things. She is an enrolled member of the Hoopa Valley Tribe. Her research and teachings are focused on Indigenous history and human rights, environmental studies, public humanities and visual sovereignty.

Orona explained that the subject of her talk on dam speculation focuses on her current research around the organized resistance against the proposed water infrastructures on the Klamath River from colonization into the present day.

“The period of dam speculation began with early colonization on the Klamath River Basin when various waves of settlers from both the Upper Basin and the Lower waged violent wars against Native people,” Orona said. “These wars began the period of resource extraction and environmental degradation through salmon fisheries, timber and gold mining.”

Orona argued that many Californian agencies say they didn’t formerly understand how building dams on the river would affect Native people and the environment. She argues that they fully understood how they would affect these things and that this argument of past ignorance is “an interesting settler scheme.”

“So, the occupation of stolen lives, lands, stolen lives, dispossession, all of this that I’m talking about right now, very much ties into climate catastrophe,” Orona said. “And it starts during this very intense period of colonization. And I’m really looking here at the Klamath River Basin as an example of this.”

Kaitlin Reed – Oct. 12

Reed explained that conservation and preservation movements are often juxtaposed with mindsets that want to take from nature when in fact, they are “two sides of the same coin, a very Eurocentric coin.” Reed explained that these mindsets view humans as being separate from nature rather than just a part of the same system as humans.

Professor Reed just published a book called Settler Cannabis: From Gold Rush to Green Rush in Indigenous Northern California, which is the topic of her talk.

The green rush refers to cannabis cultivation, specifically trespass cultivation. The book also touches on the timber rush and the fish rush, and concludes with a critique of the back to the land movement, Reed said. She explained that in Humboldt, the back to land movement is often romanticized, when in fact, its origins stem from white people leaving urban and suburban areas to buy up land in Humboldt that became very cheap because of the timber collapse.

“They quickly realized they had no idea how to live off the land,” Reed said when speaking about the need for money that was soon realized by the settlers. “So, they start cultivating cannabis as a way to earn a cash income.”

Reed goes deep in her book about cannabis cultivation in Yurok Ancestral Territory as well as other tribal nations and the exclusion of tribal nations’ participation

in the legal cannabis economy. She stated that trespass cultivation affects water and land by toxifying them and is also a source of land dispossession and violence toward Indigenous people.

She argues that before we can envision a sustainable cannabis industry, land needs to be given back and the dams must come down so that the rivers can recover from the critical condition they are currently in.

by Ruby Cayenne

Editor’s Note: Ruby Cayenne’s family has participated in the building of the nigilax̂ at Mind’s Eye Factory.

A Journey Across Time is an intertribal and community project bringing to life one of the first nigilax̂ in many centuries, the traditional vessel of the Unangax̂ people of Unalaska. It is being built at Mind’s Eye Manufactory in Ferndale, owned and run by Marc Daniels-Aygagnax̂.

Centuries ago, all the nigilax̂ vessels in existence were intentionally destroyed by Russian colonizers who arrived with extractive intentions. They enslaved many of the Unangax̂ people to take advantage of their superior hunting abilities and took “Unangan women and children hostage, demanding furs in exchange for their lives,” the National Institute of Health said.

Many Unangax̂ people were forcefully taken on an otter hunt that spanned the continent from Alaska, and down through the pacific coast. They stopped in what is now called Metini by Indigenous peoples and Fort Ross, CA by the U.S. government.

“They were taken thousands of miles and intermarried with the native people on the California coast, and they’re still here. Some of them have joined us on this build. It is a time of embracing their heritage and healing for them,” Daniels-Aygagnax̂ said.

Marc Daniels-Aygagnax̂ and Mike Ferguson carving a traditional paddle. | Photo by Ruby Cayenne

“We started off by meeting with Wiyot people and asking for the tribal blessing to begin the project since we’re on Wiyot ancestral lands,” Daniels-Aygagnax̂ said. He received blessings from the tribal government of Saint Paul Island, Alaska and the Qawalangin Tribe of Unalaska. At the beginning of the build, Perry Lincoln and his niece, both members of the Wailaki Tribe, sang a song of blessing.

Mike Ferguson is a liberal political activist and a descendant of the Unangax̂ people on his mother’s side. In adulthood, he has been finding a reconnection to his culture through Indigenous boat building. His cousin, Kaneshia McGlashan-Price, is a Unangax̂ tribe member who has been helping build the nigilax̂.

“I feel that’s really made it both a cohesive group process, but also has allowed us to get to know each other. It’s been an intense process, personally and interpersonally. It’s allowed each of us to grow,” Ferguson said when speaking about the building process.

Marc Daniels-Aygagnax̂ carving a paddle with modern machinery. | Photo by Ruby Cayenne

According to Daniels-Aygagnax̂, search for wood used in the nigilax̂ starts on the beach and is collected in the traditional way to be used in curved parts of the boat such as the bow and stern. Synthetic alternatives to some of the traditionally used materials like whale baleen and sea lion skin are being used for sustainability purposes. Steel edged hand tools and power tools being used differ from the ivory and stone tools used traditionally.

“Honestly there’s some trauma from doing the lashings, which became very painful on my hands,” Ferguson said. “To go from a flat piece of wood, to shape it into something beautiful that’s going to be used by somebody, is rewarding.”

Alaska Native Day at the Fort is held at Metini yearly and was first organized by an Unangax̂ woman several years ago. This event is where the nigilax̂ built in Humboldt will be launched this spring. There are plans to have dance groups from the Unangax̂ tribe, Kashia Band of Pomo Indians and Wiyot tribe in attendance.

Daniels-Aygagnax̂ was given the name Aygagnax̂ by an Unangax̂ mentor, with the closest translation being “one who walks.” He has been practicing Indigenous boat building for 30 years and teaches the skill.

“I work towards healing and creating better community environments that can empower people to live the lives that they want to live,” Ferguson said.