Indigenous Artists and Contemporary Environmental Issues Part I

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Indigenous protests win Victory over Pipeline August 30 2018

We cried every day as we followed the tragedy of the Orca mother Tahlequah holding her dead baby for 17 days. The pod she belongs to has not had a successful birth in several years, this baby died immediately after it was born.

The resident population of this Southern Resident pod is dying for lack of Chinook Salmon. It consists of only 75 whales. They are also disrupted by vessel noise (especially cruise ships) and toxins. Solutions are quieting vessel noise, less development in habitat , and breaching lower Snake River Dam. It is a huge job that requires going beyond token gestures, like not eating Chinook Salmon. Katie Kurtz outlines the pollution problem clearly and the urgency of supporting the superfund clean up of the Duwamish which is of course being rolled back by the current administration. Read her article “To Save the Orcas We must clean up the Duwamish.

The Lummi tribe consider the Orcas as family members. They refer to them as qwel ihol mechen or “The People who live under the sea,”.

Before this summer of grief, the Lummi carved a totem dedicated to Tokitae, the last survivor of a horrendous capture of baby orcas in 1970 when a third of the population of this same pod of Southern Resident orcas were taken by aquariums for display. Three died during the capture. Tokitae is at the Miami Seaquarium.

She is know as Lolita there and lives in an illegally small tank where she performs tricks for audiences. The Aquarium has refused to allow Tokitae to return to her family in the Northwest. When the totem reached Miami ceremonies were held outside the aquarium, but no one was allowed to come in.

At the same time the Lummi are collaborating with the National Oceanic and Atmosperic Administration to try to feed a wild orca  in the same Southern Resident pod, who is starving to death. This is a risky and unprecedented operation, as Orcas are very smart and could entirely refuse or become aware of human feeding. The analysis is that she may have worms or an infection of some kind that is preventing her from eating.

Orcas eat about 420 pounds of Chinook Salmon per day.

This magnificent mammals are incredibly bright. During the capture of babies in the 1970s one of the witnesses spoke of the gathering of the pod around the capture site, their obvious grieving at the loss of their babies, loud crying. Once the babies had been removed in a truck, the rest of the pod left the area never to return.

Does this not sound familiar, as children are ripped from their parents and sent off to captivity. This is no longer in the news, but the children are still being detained.

I want to end with Gloria Bornstein’s beautiful Whale sculpture at Seattle Center. We need a lot more beautiful art like this that celebrates these special creatures. 

I want to acknowledge the incredible reporting of Lynda Mapes at the Seattle Times on this summer of grief and crisis with our Southern Resident orca pod.