Writing Big Medicine: Author Talk with Sasha LaPointe

Hello, relatives. Welcome to All My Relations. I'm Matika. And I'm Temeris. Hi, everyone. Today we're closing out the season with something new and something we're really proud of. The launch of our author talk series, leading up to the official start of the All My Relations book club books and popping sound effect. We believe books can build community and we're starting this journey with an author whose words have cracked us open, made us laugh, and reminded us of who we are. Sasha Low Point is with us today. Welcome, Sasha. Tigreeti. Thank you for having me here. It's so awesome to be here. Thank you. Sasha, we're going to have you introduce yourself in your own way as well. But I'm going to share with our listeners a little bit about what we know about you. Sasha is a poet, a memorialist, a truth teller, and protector of ancestral memory. She's the author of red paint, the ancestral autobiography of a punk rock survivor, the poetry collection rose quartz, and most recently a thunder song, a stunning collection of essays. And she has more on the way. Sasha, Tuck Shablu Low Point is from Upper Scagic and Knuck Sack, native to the Pacific Northwest. She draws inspiration from her coastal heritage as well as her life in the city. She writes with a focus on trauma and resilience, ranging topics from PTSD, sexual violence, the work of her great grandmother, what she did for the Lachutsi language revitalization, to loud basement punk shows and what it means to grow up mixed heritage, with obsessions that range from twin peaks to Coast Salish salmon ceremonies. Sasha explores the truths of indigenous identity in Coast Salish territory. And in this conversation today, we talk about what it means to write the things we're told not to say, like the sacredness of red paint. And the sheer force it takes to be a prolific indigenous writer in this world. This is the last episode of our season, but it's also the beginning of something new. We hope you'll join us in reading Sasha's books, discussing them with us in our hybrid gatherings, and supporting indigenous authors through our book club. Well, welcome Sasha and before we dive in, I just want to acknowledge our relationality, you know, and the fact that we grew up both in Swinamish, you know, and I think that's extra special to be in this conversation with you. And I texted my aunt Lona this morning, and I asked her because my aunt Lona is like, you know, she's like the living memory of our family trees. And I asked her, I was like, are we related at all? You know, in which way? You never know, you know, in India country. And she said that my great-Lena Laura Wilbur, my great-grandma Laura Wilbur, held great respect for Vi, and that they held each other as Seatsiyab. And whenever they would see each other, they would say, oh, Seatsiyab. And she said that my grandma Laura Adoltsa will grace us today with her presence as will Vi's because they will feel good knowing that the Seatsiyabs are still together. And that gave me, it made me a little tearier to think about that, you know, like, and she told me that when your grandmother was doing her work, you know, in recording the Lachutsi dictionary, she would come and sit with my grandmother. And Lona says it was one of her favorite memories was sitting and listening to your grandma as a child. And those two would sit and gossip and laugh and speak in Lachutsi. And she said, Vi was one of the only women she could do that with. And so I think, like, it's really profound, you know, in the different ways that through the ages, our relationality continues. And so thank you so much for being here, for being a relative and for continuing this work. And go ahead and introduce yourself. Now that I'm also a little tearier, it's so beautiful. It's so beautiful. We're living out our grandma's wildest dreams. Like, this is what they wanted for us. And I'm so grateful to be connected with you. And the work we're doing is, I think, absolutely empowered by them. This is what they wanted for us. It's beautiful. It's really something to think about. And you think about the time they were living through, too. You know, like, they went to boarding school. They lived through cultural and religious persecution. They experienced racism like we can't even imagine, right? And they continued that fight. Like, it was radical at the time for Vi to be a language warrior. It was radical at the time for my great-grandmother to be on the council and to be like a four-foot-nine woman who was like deeply, powerfully fighting, you know, to not be terminated as a tribe. That took courage, deep, deep courage. And I think it was because they had somewhere deep inside of them. They had a belief that life was going to be better for their children, for their grandchildren. And I think, like, for a moment like today to happen, it's because our grandmothers prayed, fought, lived radically so that we could know moments exactly like this today. And then that, to me, is just so heartwarming. One hundred percent. Yeah. One hundred percent. Seed Star, Twalt Nucksack, Gwalt Skagit. Hello, welcome, honorable friends. It is so incredible to be here. My name is Sasha Taksha Blula Point, and I'm from Nucksack and Upper Skagit. And, you know, we are doing this whole thing with the, this book club. We're starting up a club. And with every author, we intend to ask the same questions. And so we would like to begin by asking you, you know, what are you ingesting right now that's supporting your creative process? What are some of the works that are really impacting you? I'll be it through writing or media or song, you know? Totally. I love this question because something I tell my students often, it's something that helped me when I was in my undergrad and in grad school, like, just reading things that inspire you. And so I constantly have like a giant stack of books on my nice stand, like, a unhinged amount of books. But right now I'm returning to my former professor and mentor and good friend, I call her my Yoda. Her name is Melissa Fibos. I've been reading her latest collection of essays called Bodywork that is a craft book that reminds us as folks in the margins, like whether we're indigenous, bipod, queer, like why are stories matter and why they deserve space on the page. So I've been rereading that because sometimes it is hard to continue telling these hard stories. Sometimes it's tricky, right? And so this book reminds me in a brilliant way how to stay dedicated to craft. And she also is just reminding us why it matters. I think in one of my favorite essays in the collection is called In Praise of Naval Gazing. And she ends it with a very simple and beautiful line. If you write it, I will read it. So I'm reading that and sharing it with students. And then I'm also reading and loving Consell Drake's collection. The sky was once a dark blanket. This book is godting me and I mean that in the best way. It's so beautifully, powerfully written. So I keep sharing it every week with my students. I usually try to mix it up and be like tonight we're going to read this poem from this poet, et cetera, et cetera. But every week I'm like we're reading another Consell Drake poem. And so they're like are you going to teach us this whole book? And I was like kind of. So that's what I'm ingesting right now and feeling inspired by also listening to a lot of weird punk sad girl music. Yeah, I think it's super profound when you talk about that like that part inside of us that tells us that we're not good enough or that we can't do it or that we're not enough. Or I know I certainly always have that feeling inside of me like as a writer or as a creative it goes. There's like all this trauma with that right like from the years that I was told that I wasn't a good student or that I was failed in all of those classes or you know like even like critiques as a photographer, you know I didn't like win the awards, you know. That kind of stays with us like that is still with me and people are surprised sometimes would they hear this but I was like no, because like even recently at a reading or something someone's like why do you still get nervous? You've been doing this for like 10 years and I was like no I still get nervous every time because because of where I've come from what I've gone through, what I've survived and it's badass and I'm stoked to be here but that like imposter syndrome is still I'm always kind of fighting against it and like I'm gonna like keep it real like I dropped out of alternative high school. Who does that? You know, but I did um tricky like like homeless runaway teen years I ended up dropping out of alternative high school at like 15 but found my way back to academia and that was like a hard struggle but like because of my background I do constantly feel like do I deserve to be here? Like that's real and I fight that all the time and I'm trying to get better at it and um I think it's important that we remind each other as like powerful indigenous like artists, scholars, writers that we deserve a space at the table. For sure. I often get invited to these very elite spaces right as an author and a keynote speaker and uh you know a lot of times people will treat me like I'm like the server or something you know like I get mistaken for like for for like somebody that's not meant to be there. I was literally on my way to one of my first classes this quarter and someone came up to me and thought that I was a student and I was like yeah I had my weird neon colored backpack on and whatever presenting how I present but they straight up just thought I was a student and I was like no I'm actually uh the professor getting class we're going to begin. What is your creative process like do you have a ritual that you like to follow? I do I try it becomes exceedingly difficult I think as working artists you know whether we're painters, photographers, writers, poets we have to make a living so we exist in capitalism we exist where we have to have jobs and so my writing process has I take it really seriously and it's becoming a little more wild each time like um to finish a current project I'm on right now I went out to the coast and rented a cabin on the ocean for five days by myself in the middle of hurricane no Wi-Fi no phone not even a hotel TV it was wild and I feel like doing those kinds of extreme things for our practice sometimes is really necessary because I need to get out of my regular routine to write like writing is powerful writing is sacred to me I need that kind of ritual and even when I'm at home I'll like clean everything I get like my candles lit I get my rose courts and my cedar out and then I set everything up and then I'm like now I'm gonna write like I kind of need that that ritual around it I cannot write in clutter mean either I just cannot be done it cannot be done once everything's clean and tidy and it is like kind of setting up for a ceremony of sorts for me where everything like nothing's gonna pull me away I'm in my space nobody's gonna talk to me for like six hours and I'm gonna write and I think that that is a luxury I'm grateful that I have that time it gets more and more difficult to carve out that space for myself but it's something I try to do weekly you're working on a new book right now right I am does it have a title yet yes so I've been working on it for about two years and I love this because uh in a lot of craft talks when I'm talking about creative writing and the process especially memoir and excavating memory I share the first failed manuscript which was a 400 and something page 68 chapters unhinged memoir called little boats and I would not have been able to arrive at red paint had I not written little boats first and the memoir version of that got some attention some publishers and editors were interested in it some agents were interested in representing me based off of it but ultimately it kept getting rejected and so I put it away took a big break from writing joined a band was a bartender waitress and went on tour and like kind of was like hmm taking a little break from writing I think I needed to step away from the practice of writing but little boats has been on that metaphorical shelf right just kind of hanging out there and so the current project is a fictionalized version of little boats like a novel which this will be my first endeavor in fiction so I'm really excited wow have you sold it yet not yet not yet yeah yeah can you share a moment in your life that led you to believe in your voice as a writer yes um and I love this question so thank you for asking um you know it's a intense thing to follow in the footsteps of vi talkshiblu Hilbert as her namesake where she's to tell me like talkshiblu number two you're gonna do great things and it didn't really come immediately to me right like I obviously am not a language revitalizationist I'm not a traditional storyteller but I knew that stories were important to me from a very young age but I didn't quite grasp the intensity and the call to be my own kind of storyteller until um and this gets a little dark so apologies but ultimately empowering uh it was one of the first times I ran away from home I was 14 years old I was on a Greyhound bus I was going to Seattle to visit friends or go see some ruckus punk show or whatever I was doing right being very lost as a young person and I started having a panic attack at the time I didn't know what that was I just thought I was like am I dying what's happening I have shallow breathing my chest hurts and alone on this Greyhound bus it was really scary and now of course I recognize that to be oh girl you're just having a panic attack but 14-year-old me didn't understand that couldn't comprehend that and I had my little backpack with me I opened it up and started looking for anything to write on I didn't have a journal I didn't have a notebook I found a napkin and spent the hour-long ride from Skagit to Seattle writing on every single part of this napkin like terrible poetry but it soothed me and all I could think of was I had just learned in my ninth grade English class about Sylvia Plath and how she had a quote that said I write because there is a voice inside me that will not be still and that was on loop in my brain and so I wrote on every side of this one napkin I had and that was the thing that called me back into my body calmed me down and got me through that hour-long bus ride and that's when I knew that writing wasn't just something I wanted to do but that I needed to do and that storytelling was something that was healing for me we all have our rules within the community or jobs or purpose or our gifts and like that's what I'm hearing from you is that you were called to this moment to really call on and call out your gifts so that you could find that love or return to that love you know the ancestral love and wisdom that you just that is inherently yours and I think about that and and everybody we all have our own unique paths and gifts but I will say that in many ways no matter our paths the three of us and I'd say a lot of other people that we've had the honor of talking to on the show like we're all storytellers right in different ways I'm a soccer player you would never you would never have been able to say that I'm telling stories through soccer but that's exactly what ended up happening and brought me to this point right so I think I think and you started this sit down by saying how proud our ancestors would be to sit here together and so yeah I just wanted to to call that back in and for our listeners like I'm sure many of you have found your gifts but also know that the moment will come when you're riding on that greyhound bus being called to yours yeah and they can look different I love that too I love your your soccer like moment because that's something really empowering and beautiful that's a journey that like yeah it looks different for all of us maybe you're not going to write terrible poems on a napkin on a greyhound bus or in a denny's where then I started writing poems there but like you're going to be telling your story and the fact that the three of us are here right now telling our stories and our mediums is so powerful and it's honestly what is getting me through a kind of hard week so thank you you I would love to talk a little bit more about your book red paint um I read it a couple a couple few years ago now um yes and it was so well written and um I was really intrigued by it because we come from red paint people too and it does carry that secret and cultural weight and so I guess I would just stop and ask you know why did you choose the title red paint yeah and even if you want to read the prologue yeah I would love to actually um thank you it's important that I talk about my intention and my approach to this and so first and foremost I wanted to share that this book was really um my approach in writing it was from coming from the utmost respect for our culture and our practices and um was not a book about our co-sailor spirit dancing but was a book about a deeply personal journey into healing which my connection to my ancestors guided me through and quite honestly saved my life um through it so I'll just read this and then oh thank you prologue winter dances we were a hunter gatherer society we were nomadic we lived along the coasts and on the rivers we moved with the water we moved with the resources and followed the supply of fish we picked berries and bracken root we woke garments out of cedar and mats for sleeping out of cat-tail grass shellfish and salmon were important to us we lived in cedar plank houses we lived communally and we held winter ceremonies in the longhouse people gathered they built a great fire they banished spirits in an opening ritual and then they danced they danced to the pounding of drums on dirt floors with bare feet with smoke thick in the air my ancestors danced until dawn broke when the missionaries arrived they banned the co-sailish people's spiritual practices so ceremonies went underground and for the first time were held in secret treaties were passed and eventually the salish ancestral religion was given back to the people but now it was something protected something private it is not my job to tell the story of what happens in the longhouse it would be considered disrespectful my mother has taught me to behave a certain way to honor and uphold our traditions and the wishes of my elders we come from a long line of salish medicine workers we respect this what happens in the longhouse is not what this story is about but this is a story about healing this is a story about what I've learned from my ancestors my ancestors participated in winter dances they wore red paint yeah it was so beautiful I love it for me if it was the gripping part of reading that for me it was like it feels like a voice that's coming from my own self you know like to see myself reflected on the page was never I mean especially for co-sailish people right like like I I like I love like Vangeloy are Leslie Marmanselko or you know Louise Erdrich or but these are these are writers from Indian country like the Pan Indian identity so to read something that's very specific very specifically co-sailish very specific to our people it feels so healing just to just to be it have the opportunity to read it 100% I can't say more yeah and I feel like for everything you've outlined I have been scolded for speaking on a microphone about our you know and our spiritual ways the ways that have empowered us to survive and continue to heal our people but to read about myself in your book there's really there's I've never read anything like it and it is really important for us in the sisterhood in but also for the next generations you know we're not we're not underground anymore yeah I'm sure you've taken flat though absolutely what were some of what was some of the feedback yeah how was that received well I think to like I took it very seriously and again in my approach was with the utmost respect and honoring of our culture and knowing that I was not writing from an anthropological sort of outsider view of like describing what our co-sailish spirit dancing is it was for a personal journey of healing and that absolutely included my connection to my ancestors like my uncle other ancestors woman named Aunt Susie who was one of the first women to be trained as a medicine worker in the Skagit tribe so sort of tethering myself to their strength and their story is what this was about but I think that there have been people that have been like oh she wrote about red paint you're not supposed to do that without reading the book likely yeah and it's like if you open to the first couple pages you'll see that I'm saying this is not what this is about this is a personal journey of healing one that I hoped to bring into the world to reach folks like I wish I had this book at 14 to reach folks like both of you like somewhere to see like there is a through and to the other side no matter what kind of violence or trauma we have inherited or experienced as native women that there is a strength and a from the other side there is a getting through it and that was my intention with the book medicine yeah medicine yeah ancestral medicine and I think even towards the end of it I very clearly say I don't participate in the smokehouse I'm not a dancer I share memories of being there with my great-grandmother and my grandma and my mom like four generations of us I have those memories one of the first things I did too though when I wrote this draft the first thing I did was send it to my parents and my family and my mom had notes she was like oh you can't say that and I was like noted like I never questioned any of it like I was trying to approach it very respectfully and so she was like you can't say that you can't say that and I was like okay and I even had to come up to my to bat for myself with editors who were like can you explain this a little bit more for a non-native audience and I was like nope and then like later on through the editing process you're a bit vague here and I said yes I am really and then it cut to the point where one time I joke about this so I was like do you want me to get Jill a point on the phone she'll explain this to you and they're like no no no it's fine it's like okay you're hearing me now so I did kind of have to come up to bat for myself around the respect and the privacy of it and really wanted to highlight instead just how these connections honestly guided me through some of the hardest times of trauma and moving through that like when I first started that failed manuscript of little boats I was sort of reckless in how I was approaching memory it came from an assignment where a teacher I I said write your most traumatic memory you know I was like a sophomore in college and I was like okay just re-traumatizing yourself and just charged ahead with no tools in my toolbox and just said I remember this night I remember night where I saw little boats it was a night of sexual assault at a very young age and I wrote it down and then I didn't realize in doing that I would then excavate some really dark parts of myself and I was really struggling I would later be diagnosed with PTSD I didn't have a therapist for that yet I didn't really have like a strong foundation to lean on I just kind of charged ahead recklessly which looking back now I would have done differently but during that time I was having flashbacks I was fainting I was very sick like what like I think we would like what my family described as your spirit was sick um and so when red paint showed up for me it was kind of um by chance I was living in a big communal house in Santa Fe while attending the Institute of American Indian Arts we had like five roommates or something it was like a big giant weird college house you know and when I started doing the work of your most traumatic memory I was just surrounded by old photographs and letters uh books and stories from my grandma my great grandma um and a roommate walked by super sweet dude loved living with him we lived together for a couple years um but he was also a very spiritual person and um came from medicine workers and he walked by my room and said it's really crowded in here I was like oh and then he was like yeah and what's up with what it's so red and I looked at my walls at the time they were painted like a pale green with like black lace curtains it was very like desert golf vibe so I looked around I didn't have a single red thing in my room and I was like what and then he just walked off and I was like okay I called my mom that night and I was like what's red about and she kind of laughed she was like are you serious she was like well your uncle wore red paint we come from a family who wore red paint red paint means uh it's the healers the medicine workers and I was like oh and then all of a sudden they sort of shifted my focus into exploring the women of my family and their strength and their ability to heal and that's why I have the title red paint it's not because I'm talking about our very private for a reason very protected practices it's more of how it sort of helped me and guided me through to the other side of healing so beautiful did that make any sense yes a hundred percent and I read your book and felt like you were describing that journey to belonging and a reminder of a story of remembering identity deeply like not just for you but for our people and maybe that's a lot of my own projection it's a beautiful projection and that's why I wrote it um I think that what I wanted and what I hoped for is that um especially like women growing up in rural in the middle of the forest on reservations in rural communities who may have experienced like trauma or violence like really the the message was just that our ancestors will hold us up and so when he said your room is crowded I knew in that moment that my ancestors were with me and um at the time I was yeah diagnosed with PTSD I had to wear a heart monitor for like 30 days whoa I kept fainting was wild wow wow I would just faint and I my parents once like rushed me to the hospital my arm was turning blue and then they released me and they were like here's a packet on panic attacks and asthma you were suffocating but like there was none of they yeah then they had they did all these tests like an EKG uh heart monitor I did a stress test they did an ultrasound of my heart and at the end of the all of these things I remember the doctor going well we're kind of at a loss we don't really know what's going on with you um but maybe you need to see a neurologist and at that moment I knew though I was like yeah I was like I'm done with western medicine right now like this is something I have to explore and that led me deeper into red paint and not in a way that I think people might get confused by the title and think that I'm just gonna be talking about smokehouse but I'm not I'm talking about how that connection sort of guided me through where I kind of said bye to western medicine and said oh this is spiritual this is connected to like the women who came before me and I have the tools I need did you write about it as indian sick is that how yeah that's how we refer to too yeah yeah yeah indian sick yeah yeah and only we know the answer is to how we heal ourselves yeah speaking deeply to who I am as a person but not being able to talk about it at all that's a difficult line to walk you know you know and all and then you know you also write a lot about about alcoholism in your books you know and I'm also a child of an alcoholic and I'm also I'm in recovery I don't know if you are but I'm in I've been sober for many years and so I found that all very deeply moving to and thunder song you know your essays about something so personal writing about things so personal was really like I don't know how you do it where where you find like your courage you know so I think you would have to come from big medicine you know to have that kind of courage that's what I that was sort of what I thought both times I finished reading your book like oh man Sasha's got big medicine you know I want to talk about about tulips and thunder song tulips was so deeply moving for me because you talk about in the essay how our land was colonized you know like how where we grew up in the scatge valley thousands of visitors come every year to see these tulips without realizing that like in order for there to be tulips all of the land had to be dredged the culverts had to be filled in and you used to be able to take a canoe from scadget bay all the way to Mount Baker right and by way of shallow water and now it's all farmland and so you know like you you explain how like when you make one group of people rich you make another group of people poor and so when I go out there to roozon garden and I go through their beautiful tulip fields I am reminded of that essay and something I've thought about for general for a really long time you know like the the white girls that I grew up with who were making fun of me for being poor were wealthy because they were living on stolen land and the tulips are just the perfect representation of that it's not canvas fields right it's tulips and and so I just wonder like if you could talk a little bit about like the inspiration for that essay and and you know what it feels like to have that living in the world absolutely and thank you for another yeah another great question um when I went to it was canoe journeys um where uh they were paddling to swim in a mish and uh my mom and I went I was still a student at IAA um and was home for the summer and my mom asked me to go up to to swim in a mish to see the paddlers and I hadn't been back in a long time and when I went to the park right on the waterfront um that beautiful park that has the hats yes the the cedar woven hats as um pavilions and then my auntie Cecilia La Pointe painted these beautiful uh panels that depicted scadget valley as it was pre-contact and I had never considered that before and it stuck with me I was like it was so beautiful it was marshlands tidelands waterways like a way to canoe from point A to point B and now we know it as the scadget valley farm flats so that's when the sort of seed of the tulips essay like rooted in me and I was haunted by it and it's beautiful artwork by my auntie like strong work um but I remember looking at it and being like of all my years growing up here I just was annoyed by Mount Vernon or like oh we have to drive through the farm flats to get to town and I'd never considered what it once was pre-contact and so I couldn't stop thinking about it uh at the time in the punk band I was in my bandmate asked me to write a song and I said okay it's gonna be about tulips and she was like okay like flower and I was like yes it is um and so it actually started like the fun fun fact about the tulips essay is that it started as a just rowdy very basic very simple punk song where I was thinking and holding in my mind's eye my aunt's paintings and considering the farm flats and then it started as this like very basic simple punk song but then I realized we performed it a few times and I would almost cry when I sang it like something deep was like coming from me and so I was like this is worthy of more research like I want to look into this and then I was like when did the tulip festival start who brought it was like a rabbit hole like a total Alice in Wonderland where I was like I found about but found out about uh George Gibbs the first um settler who brought tulip bulbs over and how he thought it would be really prosperous and it was and like they would do really well in um the tide flats that had and diked and uh turned from marshlands into fertile I'm really nerding out right now guys I'm sorry but I just like fell into this rabbit hole and this is where we grew up right and I didn't know the history of where I grew up and so I kept learning more and getting more angry and then being like wow the tulips really represent this like flag of settler colonial triumph over our ancestral lands like and so then the punk song turned into an essay it was actually one of the first essays I wrote for Thunder song um to consider what it means for the native community for us to exist there and drive through tulip fields to get to Mount Vernon or Burlington or and beyond um it's kind of an intense thing some people think I hate tulips now I don't like I don't love them but like they're like someone gave me a bouquet of tulips recently and they're like oh I'm sorry you hate these and I was like no I don't I hate settler colonialism but I don't hate tulips themselves we just hate what they represent on our land yeah yeah like capitalism all of the things right to to think this beautiful flower stands for that yeah this administration for example is working to erase history these are the histories that we're not taught right yeah we just wake up and we see tulips every day and we thought that this is the way the land has always been no no you want to just go on take a call of a yes okay in thunder song you talk about um this mermaid and you describe yourself as a mermaid and and for as a loving person who also relates to that land like in have a cousin who's the water spirit man from deception past um can you talk about that identity and even read a short passage um maybe the maiden of deception past yeah definitely for context I was hanging out with my grandma at her beach property on the peninsula and trying to impress her because I thought she was the coolest person ever and I was like oh I can tell a story so we'll start there desperate to impress her one afternoon after a long morning of clamming and fishing I sat down next to her as she cleaned and gutted a fish I decided to test out my own skills as a storyteller I sucked in a deep breath and launched into a play by play of Disney's The Little Mermaid I left nothing out I even sang the songs I gave a brief history of where the fairy tale originated my mother had taken me to the Seattle Public Library and I'd educated myself on all things mermaid I knew it was based on Hans Christian Anderson's The Little Mermaid and I had seen the picture books and watched the animated film discovering to my horror that the mermaid princess doesn't marry the prince in the original but tragically turns to see foam in the end my great-grandmother graciously listened she smiled and nodded she praised me when I was finally finished you know she said that afternoon on the beach your ancestors have their own sea princess I nearly fell off my stump I listened intently as my great-grandmother told me for the first time the story of the maiden of deception pass the story tells of a maiden who lived with her people down by the water's edge one morning while gathering clams with her sisters the maiden stepped into the ocean and felt it grip her she heard a voice as the ocean spoke to her reassuring her that he only wanted to look on her beauty each day she'd returned to the beach to collect oysters and clams and each day the ocean spoke to her he beckoned her to come live with him he pleaded for her to be his bride one morning the voice did not come but a man emerged from the water tall and handsome he walked the girl through the village and asked her father for her hand in marriage her father refused unwilling to part with his daughter and certain she would die in the ocean the ocean left but warned the village that if the girl could not be his bride he'd bring on a drought true to his word the rivers dried up and there were no clams or fish for the maidens people to eat the maidens father finally refused to see his people go hungry and agreed to the marriage on the condition that his daughter be allowed to return to the village once a year able to walk on land and be with her people the ocean complied and the two were married in the sea the maiden was happy she was in love and enjoyed her new home but she knew her people missed her and soon it was time to return home each year the girl returned home it became more difficult for her to walk on land she returned each each year covered in more bits of the sea in the last year she returned her father saw the barnacles on her face and the sea kelp that was her hair and heard the difficulty in her breath he told his daughter he couldn't bear to see her in such discomfort and released the ocean from his promise to return the maiden to her people each year the people of the village lived happily with their abundance from the ocean and knew that each time they saw the long streaming pieces of sea kelp floating in the narrow waterway of deception pass they were seeing their maiden's hair and she was still with them the maiden of deception pass didn't just disappear into the ocean she became the ocean she sank into the sea to save her tribe from starvation she returned each year like Persephone but unlike Persephone she went willingly into the depths into the underworld this somehow empowered her beyond the other sea maidens I'd become so obsessed with mermaids were always bargaining with a sea witch to trade their fins for legs their motives were usually entirely selfish and almost always resulted in their demise silkies were a different kind of tragedy like mermaids the half seal women of Scottish folktales always sacrifice their life in the sea to be with human men to be on land the men often tricked the silkies hiding their seal coats from them so they couldn't return to sea the silkies became depressed they missed the ocean and their sealed lives they were captive but unlike mermaids and silkies the maiden of deception pass wasn't a victim but a warrior willingly braving the deep sea to save her people and find happiness silkies mermaids and even the maiden of deception pass all got to go someplace else they traded fins and seal coats they left their homes I begged my great grandmother to tell and retail the story as often as she would I ran along the beaches with new enthusiasm and pride the ocean and I were practically related I hopped along the stony shores ecstatic each time I'd see the rubbery shine of sea kelp on the surface I'd scoop large bits of the maiden's hair up in my arms happy with the proof of it I felt connected to the water in a new way now beautiful and you remain connected to the water yeah yeah I love that story so much I love going to visit Kokwalawood when I was young it's amazing how these stories are so important for us as young people you know and then we each like grasp them and so that's the first time I've ever seen it written out I've always like read it on the plaques so I was like oh this is really cool there's something about ink on a page our own stories our own wisdom our own belief systems how important it is for us as native people to to have the opportunity to connect with that on a page and it really got in me and stuck with me through all these years and I still carry it with me that the there's huge differences right where the main of deception past feels more empowered to me she is literally helping her people she's making a sacrifice and yes becoming the ocean but she's happy about it whereas the little mermaid was far more tragic right so that's one of the first times at a very young age that I realized our stories from our co-sales culture our fears and powerful not like these sad princesses that are like turning to see foam like yes her hair is seek help but she willingly walked into the sea to save her people from starvation and that's beautiful the feminist before feminism yeah the original feminist yeah thank you so much Sasha thank you for being here with us this for this incredible powerful and tender conversation and for showing us what it means to write with courage and clarity and relatives this episode marks something new it's the start of our all my relations book club so exciting and um a little tear the end of this podcast season um it has been such a beautiful journey to be with each and every one of you and what a way to end um with our relative here talk should blue yeah and a quick personal note for me um my baby was born yeah had a baby uh we haven't talked about it on the podcast yet i'm sure we will next season after i've uh you know we covered and i'm taking a little sacred pause for a postpartum we're gonna take a little break here we'll be back in a few months thank you so much for your grace and for holding space and walking this journey with my growing family and while we take a break from weekly episodes we're inviting you all to join our new book club um and join the community so can you explain Matika how it works yep step one you're already doing it if you like the list write the list and check it off yep each book we feature begins with an author talk like this the full video will live on patreon so if you'd like to see the actual video uh you can do so by subscribing to our patreon and the audio will continue to drop here and every episode includes our three signature questions that you heard Sasha answer earlier two months later we'll host a hybrid book discussion on zoom and in person here at tideland's in Seattle book club members get background materials from our partners at the indian girls book club and then a few months after the episode drops we close the loop with a live podcast event featuring the author at tideland's it's easy what are you waiting for pick one or more books from our list and start reading folks sign up for the book club now at allmyrelationspodcast.com so you'll get invites materials and access to it all sign up what are you waiting for you're shaving them out already yeah if you love this conversation with Sasha support her work directly by her books from us at allmyrelationspodcast.com for every two books purchased we'll donate one copy to the indian girls book club who will gift them to young native readers don't miss what's coming up at tideland's on mj. 6 we open our next exhibition in digit queer a powerful group show celebrating indigenous queer identity and culture and so much joy we hope to see you there we'll be back in two months with a brand new season until then follow us on the gram at amr podcast support our work on patreon come visit us at tideland's subscribe to the podcast share the podcast listen to old episodes if you haven't listened let's grow our following everybody yes let's work and work and a big hishka thank you so much Sasha and to each and every one of you all of our listeners again please share this episode who you think needs it a lot of good stuff in here folks subscribe leave us a review and go tell your auntie tell your auntie and then show them how to use it this episode was produced by all my relations with creative direction by teo shantz editing sound by poncho sanchez social media by katerina and support from elisa hampton thanks team thanks team we love you and we will see you all in the next chapter Sasha thank you so much for being here take me see all my relations