diʔaʔ uʔxʷ

The older I get, the harder it is to remember how things used to be. The memories of my youth are so vague. It’s impossible to imagine the way it used to be, for myself, my family and my tribe. Still, I challenge my mind to recall.

I clutch the heart shaped locket at my chest. The locket is rather old. With a little polish, it could shine again but I keep it the way it is. There are no pictures inside it but it is sort of an heirloom from my grandmother. She is no longer with us and I miss her every day. The locket was once hers. She found it peculiar; she’d never seen anything like it. It was such an interesting little trinket that she kept hidden away in a cedar box, wrapped in elk hide. No one knew about it, except for me.

“k̓ʷuyəʔ,” my grandmother said one day, as she lay ill in bed. “Grab my box. I want to show you something.”

My grandmother didn’t speak a word of English. She used the old Salish language. She was one of the few that could still fluently speak it. Part of me was jealous of how swiftly the words came to her. They no longer came to me with swiftness.

I had delicately grabbed the cedar box, careful not to jostle the contents within. I set it beside my grandmother and she slowly lifted the lid up. My grandmother had many items in this box, old relics from a time now gone. She grabbed the soft elk hide and gingerly opened it up to show the tarnished old locket.

My grandmother said nothing as she grabbed my hand and placed the locket in my hand. I stared at it for a long time. I gave her a quizzical look. I could understand the old Salish language, but I couldn’t speak it. My mouth had abandoned the unique sounds of my mother tongue long ago.

Grandmother’s voice was soft and worn by age. In Salish, she said, “This was an odd thing that I found when I was young. I used to think it was special, but now I see it was a warning.”

A few days later, she would pass. We grieved for many days and swore, by the old traditions, to never speak her name for at least a year. It was a sign of respect, but also, it might tempt her spirit to come back from the Spirit World. If her spirit was truly lonely, she might try to take her family to the other side with her.

Her funeral was a large potlatch gathering. We gave away all her cherished things to family and friends who knew her best. I was glad she’d given me the locket. It was like a family reunion though. I got to see family I hadn’t see since I was a child.

My memories of my childhood are spotty at best. This was awhile after the settlers arrived. I know us children were never allowed to go near them.

“They want to destroy everything,” my father used to say. “They want to destroy the land, the sea, and the people.”

My father doesn’t speak much now, and when he does, he’s usually too drunk for me to understand him. I wish he wouldn’t drink, but I understand why he does it.

The settlers had killed his wife, my mother. Shot her dead for no reason. They thought it was a sport. They thought it was a game. They thought we didn’t matter. They didn’t feel sorry for it at all. In fact, they had laughed while shooting rounds at her when she was heading back to our village. Most of the bullets missed her, save for the one that hit her in the head.

My older sister wailed into the night when she found out. My father went silent. We grieved for many days but it was different from how we would grieve for my grandmother. Grandmother’s funeral was a celebration of life. My mother was murdered, therefore there was no celebration. Just sadness.

My father had met my mother at a boarding school. The two of them escaped when my mother had received a severe beating for singing a traditional song. Years later, she would sing the same song as she rescued me and my sister from the school.

A lot of my people ended up in boarding schools. Most of them perished and now rest in unmarked mass graves. Those who survived ended up with third degree burns on their spirits; gaping wounds that would ooze sorrow but would never heal.

I close my eyes hard. It’s hard to remember the school. Not because the memories are missing, but because the memories hurt. I tried to be compliant while there. I didn’t want the beatings.

They took us kids from the river one day. I don’t know who it was. He said he was an agent. It was me, my sister, and a few of my cousins. This agent came and ushered us all into a rickety carriage. We thought we were going for a ride. It was a nightmarish ride that didn’t end for many years.

The carriage ride wasn’t too bad, but the further away we went from the river, the more nervous my stomach became. When I vomited from the stress, the agent’s face went dark red and he screamed at me. He stopped the carriage and made me clean it up. I remember vomit getting in my hair.

In those days, we wore our hair long. The girls wore their hair split down the side of their head into two braids. The boys had their long hair in one braid down their back. When we arrived at the school, they pulled us from the carriage to get our haircut. My people weren’t allowed to cut our hair.

As they strapped us into a chair, a large woman in weird clothing chopped off both my braids. My blood ran cold and I wailed as though my spirit had been pierced with a knife. The lady who was cutting my hair roared angrily. I responded to her rage by singing a mourning song, and she slapped me across the face so hard I could hear my teeth rattle. From then on, I didn’t sing or speak Salish.

I looked at the ground, tears dripping from my eyes. My two braids lay on the floor. Just seeing them like that made me cry even more but I did so softly. The woman continued cutting my hair. When I was done, she unstrapped me from the chair and pushed me out and I walked away, where another lady grabbed my hand and led me down a hall. I looked back at the chair and saw my sister’s scared face.

I was always told that the only time we cut our hair was when someone close to us passes into the Spirit World. At the time, I thought my entire village had been slaughtered and killed. I had no idea until much later that that wasn’t the case.

After the haircut, we were bathed and scrubbed, deloused and forced into stiff clothing. I hated every moment of it.

I feel like I waited for a lifetime for my parents to come get me. In fact, by the time they came, I had abandoned all hope. I tried to get by the best I could. In spite of the rape, physical abuse, and starvation, I looked for simple things to make my day better. I loved writing. I loved working in the orchard. I loved spending time with the farm animals.

My mother and father eventually came for us, but the damage had already been done. My parents never wanted us in the boarding schools. Not long after our rescue, mother was killed.

We had only been at the school for two years, but that was long enough. I didn’t know how to spirit dance anymore. I had no idea how to sing traditional songs. I couldn’t remember where and when the salmon spawned, or where we used to gather berries and roots. I couldn’t remember the stories my grandparents had taught us as we sat around the fires. Hell, after the boarding schools, I started avoiding my grandparents entirely. I didn’t know how to communicate with them.

Then, my sister went missing.

Everyone’s story differed. Some say she married a settler and took off for a better life. Some say she was murdered and dumped into the unforgiving bay. Some even say they saw her get kidnapped. I wonder if she ended up back at the boarding school. An aunty of mine swore she was sold into prostitution.

I hated thinking of my sister like that. It was easier to pretend she was dead. At least it afforded me the opportunity to mourn and attempt to move on.

After that, I leaned on my grandparents more than ever. I felt like I had no family. Most of my cousins ended up getting killed in the wars or killing themselves with alcohol. Or like my sister, they went missing. Some moved on, got married and had kids.

I never could learn Salish and my grandmother had no patience to teach it to me. But I did learn some of the songs and stories, though the stories I would translate to English. I also learned how to cook and prepare game. My grandmother thought I had become too white.

“day̓ pastəd, tsi dəgʷi,” she would say. I hated it when she said that.

I was shocked when she gave me the locket. My grandmother never gave me anything physical like that. All her gifts were intangible.

I sit here now and try to think of the way it used to be. I can’t see the life we had before the reservations. I cannot see anything from before the moment we were taken at the river. What was I even like as a child? Did I sing and dance? Did I say “haboo” during stories so that I wouldn’t grow a hunchback? Did I weave? Was I ever really Snohomish?

I grab the locket and pull it off of me. The chain snaps and I hold it in my hand, wondering why my grandmother would keep such a thing for so long.

Part of me thinks she gave it to me because I truly was like the whites now. Another part of me thinks she gave it to me to remind me of what our people endured. Yet another part of me thinks that she was passing down a lesson.

The heart shaped locket wasn’t special. I preferred necklaces made of cedar and string; necklaces of beads and shells. I decide to bury it in the dirt.

Grandmother was right. It was more like a warning than a treasure. With the locket came the settlers. With the settlers came the treaty. With the treaty came the loss of land. With the loss of land came the reservations. With the reservations came the loss of traditional hunting, fishing and gathering grounds. And with that, came starvation. After my people had lost our lands and our foods, it was time to lose everything else that made us a unique people. The boarding schools would strip us of heritage, culture, and language. I went into the boarding schools as suxʷilulic̓aʔ. I came out the boarding school as Theresa.

From 1855 until now, every day was dooms day. My people lived through an apocalyptic event. Maybe that’s why I write in this journal. I want to remind myself of what I’ve been through. I want to remind myself that I cannot change the color of my skin. I might not have much of my culture left, but I will practice what I do have and learn what I can from others.

Because, I am still here.