What you are thinking about affects what you see.
For the past two months I have been doing research and pre-production work for a major documentary film project about the Hangman Creek Watershed. This work has brought me into the world of local Native American tribes and deepened my understanding of how important salmon restoration work is to the tribes. Tribal Leader Margo Hill shares a Spokane Tribe flood myth in an essay titled The River Gives Us Life in the Paul Linholdt edited book The Spokane River.
She also goes on to point out how the confluence of Hangman Creek and the Spokane River is the oldest continuously occupied site in the state of Washington at over 8000 years old with more than 65,000 archaeological artifacts to substantiate this.
This work has also made me realize that the history of European-American settlement and the adverse impact on the indigenous people here is still so recent and that their are current living tribal members who knew grandparents who were involved in the war of 1858. From just over 40 settlers in 1850’s to over 600,000 people living in the Spokane metropolitan area! Spokane has grown so much in just 150 years.
My students and I have been spending a week in a building downtown that was built in 1903. I have been leading walking tours of our city where they can see cornerstones dating back to the 1890’s. On our first walk I was drawn to show the the intensity of the falls during spring runoff. It is such an amazing spectacle to see how much water rushes through. In fact the Salish word for the Spokane River is sƛ̓x̣etkʷ (pronounced ska-hét) which translates as fast moving water.
To get down close to the falls we walked around city hall and dropped down into the recently created Huntington Park. This area was traditionally inhabited by the Sp’q’n’i” (Spokane) and Schitsu’umsh (Coeur d’ Alene) tribes along with other regional tribal visitors. Today the most notable Native American inhabitants are the metal sculptures that represent this heritage.
Before the building of dams, 60-80 lbs Chinook Salmon made there way all the way to the site of these falls. Salmon provided 50 percent of their overall annual caloric intake until the day the path was blocked.
While I have photographed the falls many times before, this research changed how I saw this place and caused me to think more intently about the sculptures and think about how I might show the relationship between these figures and the environment. In one I am thinking about the salmon and in the other I am thinking about the challenges of broken treaties by government agencies as I peer at the bowed head with the court house in the background. The blue sky fills the negative space like tears flowing down the face. I am grateful for the talent of Colville native Virgil “Smoker” Marchand who created these sculptures titled The Salmon Chief and Women Drying Salmon. I am seeing the landscape differently now as I become more aware of local history and indigenous viewpoints.
