The water she calls home

The pace of the last couple of days has been a bit more relaxed as I’ve had time to explore the coastal areas with Jack, visit the museum in Coupeville, and have an incredible conversation with a Coast Salish artist and writer who is seeking to enliven the voices of other First Nations women in reclaiming their role in all things water.

We have been lucky to spend a lot of time at the beach at low tide. Jack is particularly intrigued by sea anemones and how they recoil to his touch; he hypothesized that those still partially submerged would be faster to react than those entirely exposed to the air, and proceeded to test this on a sample of approximately 25-30 unconsenting study volunteers along the shoreline of Whidbey Island. Analysis of this data has yet to be conducted.

Jack connecting with green sea anemones (Anthopleura elegantissima)

We went on a hike around Ebey’s Landing, a historical preserve with some buildings and structures dating back to the Ebey family’s establishment in the 1850s as the first white residents of Whidbey Island. Preservation of the land for the sake of public use is certainly a good thing, and the scenery is beyond idyllic. Though I can’t help but detest the preservation of the buildings, considering that their origin came at the direct expense and anguish of the indigenous tribes of the island. To the credit of the National Historic Reserve, they make this fact widely known and pay reverence to the native communities of the islands, past and present. Be that as it may (I just love that phrase), I can’t help but view the wooden homestead with a singular disdain. They stand because of a treaty that forced Skagit, Samish, Swinomish, and Kikiallus people off of their lands of 10,000 years. But sure, let’s keep these 175-year-old colonization pods intact.

Homestead buildings on the Ebey’s Landing Preservation site. Basic.

Speaking of the original residents of these islands, I had the absolute joy and pleasure of speaking with a Coast Salish woman who is seeking to reinvigorate the voices of her fishing and tidelands peers through writing and art. Rosemary Georgeson, a resident of Galiano Island (British Columbia), agreed to be interviewed for my project. I reached out after reading about her symposium: The Water We Call Home: Re-presencing Indigenous women’s connections to fish, water, and family around the Salish Sea. She shared with me some of her family history, growing up fishing in the San Juan Islands, and the depth to which her personal, cultural, and familial identity is tied to being on the water. She spoke of how First Nations women, specifically, were pivotal in fishing and securing food resources in tidelands for thousands of years before colonization, yet were not allowed to speak when fishing commissions came in the 1920s (men had to ask women what to say at the meetings). There have been very few pathways for female indigenous voices to be amplified since, especially considering that when Rosemary was growing up, the only college degree program offered by the Canadian government for indigenous women was nursing. She got into creative writing in the early 2000s as an “aboriginal community liaison” in storytelling and began to write about her experiences in fishing, leading to her writing and directing a show called Women in Fish: A way of life lost, and the women who were a part of it.

A Swinomish canoe at the Island County Historical Museum, Coupeville WA.

Now, Rosemary is building up as many women as she can who have also come from lives on the water - fishing, canoeing, oyster or clam farming - and seeks to bring meaning and power to their voices. With both the effects of environmental damage and industry-wide changes in policy and technology, smaller fishing operations that have sustained themselves for generations are no longer able to meet catch minimums required to hold their licensing and have been driven out of fishing, at least in the methods they know. Rosemary reflected to me: “What the hell do I do with all that knowledge? Weather, sound, smell…it’s all your senses. You have to have all seven senses going. I had to know what was above me, below me, and what was in my heart. Now what do I do with all that wasted knowledge?” She finds purpose in connecting with other indigenous women and using art to feel a life lived that doesn’t exist anymore. Some of her upcoming work will focus on climate change through indigenous eyes, as well as expanding the circle of Coast Salish women, continuing work on The Water We Call Home. I absolutely cannot wait to hear and see more about her work.

My mom, Jack, and I visited the Island County Historical Museum in Coupeville, and I came across this beautiful mermaid figure and a story about her, the Maiden of Deception Pass, Ko-Kwal-alwoot. We will be going kayaking at Deception Pass on Friday, and I will be thinking of her and of Rosemary throughout.

The Maiden of Deception Pass at the Island County Historical Museum, Coupeville WA.