A lot of people are unaware of Marlon Brandos extensive efforts to bring attention to Indigenous rights issues. From attempting to platform an Indigenous person during the Oscars, to giving an RV to the American Indian Movement that the feds would pull over in Wichita, it is no wonder we find him at the Fish-ins during 1964. The title image shows Brando with Puyallup tribal leader Bob Satiacum, Brando is holding one of 2 steelhead salmon he caught during the protest.
It's important to note the real impetus of these protest not only being the Puyallup but the Nisqually people as well which, the right hand map shows in reference to Puyallup. Puyallup being in the middle of Tocoma, Nisqually is right outside the western city limits. All of this history of course is underpinned by settler-colonialism that we can't help but see being repeated (only with modern technology) in Palestine.
Of course we all know Lewis and Clark to be foundational to western expansion, their expedition having ended in the PNW, it makes sense why when Ft. Lewis was built they would name it after Meriwether. This is why we can't colonial occupation and land grabs to something "hundreds of years ago" considering Bill Frank was born only 25 years after their treaty was signed and lived to be 101. Our elders and leaders have a living memory of this time because it really wasn't that long ago
In total I have heard elders say 400 times the franks had been arrested, 40 were the times they were charged with a crime instead of only having property seized
And if you are ever lucky enough to meet the people who grew up learning from the Frank's, you will see why I felt the need to inform people more about this topic. You see February 12th marked 50 years since the courts ruled in favor of the organizers
Yet the salmon are not safe, and in fact are on the brink of extinction. When I went to the Pacific Northwest I went to Frank's Landing, I visited the Puyallup, and then I went North to Lummi. There I would have an interview with Children of the Setting Suns production crew, and would meet with Jewel James. There I learned about the effort to establish an International governing body to protect the salmon from over-exploitation called the Salmon Peoples Project, which would seek to connect people who rely on salmon for their way of life, to fight on behalf of the Salmon.
Solidarity on an International level has always been at the root of Red Power, and is why I think people should learn to put down their hubris, and humble themselves to hear about the kinship between our nations and the other-than-human nations that are often hard for settlers to understand.
There's a great song by the AIM activist Floyd 'Red Crow' Westerman (a grandpa of mine) called "They Didn't Listen" which is painfully relevant today, as is his song "Where were you when" when I mention humbling oneself to hear another world. While in Lummi I learned their traditional river only saw 3 salmon return, and I was honored with a can of smoked salmon of one of them, and feasted with them after being invited to an incredible ceremony to celebrate the end of a totem journey.
This is despite the best conservation efforts of settler society, and the elders there believe this year there will be no salmon if the dams are not removed. There has been incredible efforts to do this, but the question remains what will happen? Have their predictions changed since 2019 and 2021 when I last heard them? We will see.
I can only talk so much about this specific story out of respect for the people who I was a guest to, but you can read about it https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/indigenous-carvers-totem-pole-to-journey-across-pacific-northwest-to-bolster-dam-removal-movement/ where I am actually behind the camera as the photo of the 3 of them is takem (Jewel being to the right). They were actually laughing and smiling right before the camera took the photo and had to take considerable effort to stop smiling. The totem pole shown above is my photo of the same one shown in the paper, and neither of us took a photo of the other side. On the other side was a red women waiting to be reborn through the salmon, this symbolized Indigenous resurgence through traditional food systems brought into the future and updated. It was an honor to have met these people and shared our stories, to hear how they valued the salmon like we value buffalo. I look forward to visiting again this year and to hear about the dams they are tearing down, and what theyre carving next.
Most recently was a totem pole https://around.uoregon.edu/content/totem-pole-journey-will-make-stop-uo-campus that was an orca being ridden by an Indigenous woman in reference to the same orca from 2018 that inspired the journey I saw the end of. They call orcas the people under the sea, and I think when we see literal organized attacks on yachts, we should consider what that means for organizing given stories of crows collecting change for people when trained to. Theres a lot you can do thinking outside the box, to me this is how we invent the future
So if you learned something and want to help us out we are currently raising $1000 for an Anishinaabe families electric bill that got away from them with rising prices, and ultra cold, cold spells and weirdly warm spells making bills extremely unpredictable. As well, the utility is owned by enbridge who is being required to remove Line 5 from Bad River lands where this family lives, to us we believe there might be a case of mass retaliation through raising prices. We have 711/1000 we are also looking for help paying the storage costs of an elder and community leaders ceremonial items he has had to store to house 15 people during the winter. We have 87.50/200 needed to pay that bill.
You can of course support these people monthly and our organizers via the patreon or liberapay (found on https://linktr.ee/chunkalutanetwork) and hear the CLN podcast as soon as the episode is ready verse on the 20th of every month for the public feed. All content is eventually made free and we encourage that you steal and distribute it, who knows maybe a pirate RSS feed might appear to get patreon content for free at the same time. At any rate supporting us monthly will go towards paying $500 a month stipends for International organizers of a variety of orgs, that were they given that extra support could dedicate far more time to incredible work. We are increasing our first year goal to 3k/month as we have identified several candidates that we believe could do incredible work, if supported how people support podcasters doing the bare minimum. The podcast is a byproduct of easily produced theoretical and relevant discussions to the current moment and organizing our networks are doing. We are hoping to start writing more when the website launches and ask forgiveness for the delays in thats launch, as well as the delay in the audio documentary (we are doing some rewrites due to time constraints of the second narrator we wrote in and we are making all of the music ourselves now) anyway I promise it is worth the wait and things just take time to do right and not cheat people for the years of support theyve given me in pursuing this research. Its been a real honor and turned into the Chunka Luta Network so it really is just something else worth documenting the best I can the first time. However you can see rough drafts on patreon before publication lmao. Anyway thanks for reading all of this if you did
