SINCE TIME IMMEMORIAL is a recurring series featuring community members whose families have been here since time immemorial. The ancestral knowledge carried by
Lhaq’temish, Nooksack, and other Coast Salish peoples is knowledge about how to live in our shared home in a good, life-sustaining way. We live in a time when we need to restore our relationship with Mother Earth and with one another. We are grateful for these stories, told in the words of each featured individual.
Noelani Auguston is an enrolled member of Shxwhá:y Village of the Sto:lo Nation, and has family ties with both Lummi and Nooksack. A graduate of the University of Washington, she received her MFA in creative writing with a focus on screenwriting from the Institute of American Indian Arts. She currently works as a screenwriter and producer for Children of the Setting Sun Productions (CSSP).
Photo courtesy of Dani Winters Photography
How would you like to introduce yourself?
Noelani kwen-sná. I7lh chan tolí7 Noxwsá7aq qe Shxwhá:y ilh ta Stol:o qe Kanaka Maoli. I’m the daughter of Andrea Bumatay-Jefferson and Joseph Jefferson Sr. I am the granddaughter of Priscilla Gladstone and Andy Bumatay. I grew up here in Whatcom County on the Nooksack reservation. I live with my husband and three-year-old son.
I’ve heard some introductions in Xwlemi Chosen, the Lummi language, but your introduction sounds different.
Lhéchalosem. It’s a language of Nooksack and the lower Fraser River area. I’m not fluent at all, but language is part of our culture; it’s important to speak it. We have only a handful of fluent speakers.
I can imagine that language might also be important to you since you’re a working writer and filmmaker. How did you get your start in all this? I used to be a kid in elementary school writing poems, little stories, songs. I was also really interested in films and movies. I remember sitting down with a notebook watching movies and writing down all the action, transcribing the dialogue.
What does your writing life look like these days?
At CSSP, I’m like an overall writer. Scripting dramatic projects like The Sound, working on documentaries, storyboarding themes and ideas, characters.
“The Sound” has been getting a lot of attention lately.
Yeah, it’s a dramatic series; we just finished the proof of concept pilot, which we’re hoping will help secure funding for the whole series. I wasn’t at CSSP when the project started—they brought me on after the first draft was done and it felt like it needed a local Salish voice.
What’s it about?
A misfit group of Salish teens travels by canoe through their ancestral waterways, and all the while they come to terms with grief, healing, identity, love, loss. We call it ‘Reservation Dogs meets Euphoria.’ It’s real and raw, dealing with mental health issues—we don’t sugarcoat things. But we also, you know, keep it PG.
Is there a film project that you carry around in your heart and in your dreams, one you’re passionate about making some day?
Yes. It’s my Salish superhero flick. It comes from one of our local legends about X:als the Transformer—he’s a shapeshifter who has the ability to heal conflicts. I thought it would be cool if this transformer power gets pushed into a meek Salish girl who must fight forces that are destroying her homelands. Epic battles with a cool finale in the Cascades, where rocks and trees and huge ancestral soldiers kind of break out of the mountain form to help our girl superhero.
That sounds fantastic! Is there a teaching of some sort that you hold close, that helps guide you in your work?
There’s a quote from Charene Alexander that really resonates with me: “Storytelling is medicine and it’s healing for our people to be able to share.” As Native people, with the systematic abuse that has happened to us through the generations, when it comes to sharing who we are, it’s like, we have our walls up. But you know, we’re starting to share our stories and share our customs and values with the hope that as people learn about us and the history here, we can all live together in kindness and understanding.
I always like to ask, what do you do for fun or to restore yourself?
I like playing with my kid and really being in the moment with him. Being on the land, outside. We have property out here in Nooksack territory and it’s so nice—we’ve got blueberries, the river’s close by. During the harvest times my husband and I go up into the hills, up past the Falls, and grab cedar, devil’s club, different things.
Anything you’d like to add?
My journey has been something that feels beyond me, like things have just fallen into place when I’ve followed my gut. There’s a spiritual feeling within you when you really connect to the elements, and pray, when you feel your ancestors come to you. It’s like a fire in your belly. I just have to tell any young Native people, any youth out there, that you have to follow those instincts and those passions and those things that give you joy.
Yálh kwómalh ashóy, Noelani!
About the Writer:
Julie Trimingham is grateful to make her home on traditional Lhaq’temish territory, and to work for the Sacred Lands Conservancy (SacredSea.org), an Indigenous-led 501c3 nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting the life, culture, and sanctity of the Salish Sea.
