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.
Photograph by Julie Trimingham
Eliza Julius is a writer, beadworker, and multi-disciplinary artist. She has worked at Children of the Setting Sun Productions, hosting the Young and Indigenous podcast and organizing a major conference for Indigenous youth. She also played the lead role in CSSP’s Waiting for God, a film dedicated to the memory of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. Eliza is a published poet, and has performed her poetry to a packed house at the Mount Baker Theatre, among other venues. She is currently studying at Northwest Indian College, and has launched her own jewelry business, Coast Salish Beads. She is an enrolled member of Lummi Nation.
How do you like to introduce yourself? I’ve known you and loved you like a daughter for years, of course, but how do you like to introduce yourself to people who don’t know you?
My name is Eliza Julius and I’m an artist.
Yes, you are! You have worked in so many media, from writer to performance ot visual arts and beyond. When did you discover that you were an artist?
My dad is an artist, so I’ve just kind of been surrounded by art for a majority of my life. When I was 11 years old, I lived at the Lummi Youth Academy. I had an extra credit assignment to write and submit a poem to the American Public Library of Poetry. So I climbed up to my top bunk in my dorm room at the Academy, and I started to write. The poem that came out was called The Shoes I Walk In, about my mother (an addict) and the hardships that came along with not having her around. When the poem was chosen and published, I knew that I could write. It came so naturally, and it felt right, and it lifted my heart, took some weight off. Writing just feels like home.
You’ve done so much since then: acting, podcasting, organizing, painting, beading. You’ve also had a lot of life stuff to deal with. And you’re only twenty-three.
It’s insane. I feel fifty. Yes, lots of life. I’ve already partially raised a child, my little brother, for two years. I wasn’t completely ready to take on parenting at twenty-one. I loved it. And it was hard. I often think about all the older sisters of the families I see, and I want them to know that it’s okay to be selfish. Sometimes it’s okay to think about yourself. You don’t have to be responsible for everything all the time, it’s okay to work on you. You deserve to be a child too.
You’ve lived a Lummi, at Nooksack, but now you’re such an Islander. You’ve worked on the ferry and at the general store, your little brother went to school at the Beach School there—and of yourse you come from people who have always lived on and around these islands. How did you find yourself here on Lummi Island?
I’ve been living on Lummi island for almost five years now, with my husband, Dylan. I am the first Lummi Nation woman to work on the Whatcom Chief! I always love to see tribal members use their free ride and visit the island. I love this island community so much, it’s really a part of who I am today. When I first moved here, I’d had a rough go of things. Horrible previous relationships. Both of my parents are addicts, that’s something that I have struggled with my whole life. Just them being not consistent in my life, kind of tapping in and tapping out. So when I moved here, I came with a lot of trauma, a lot of weight on me, and not a lot of healthy coping mechanisms. But I had a few people who never gave up on me, and that’s what I needed. I had you and Dylan and my friends.
You are loved.
I had to learn to let that hard stuff go. Don’t forget it, but take what you can from it. Take the lesson that you learned and make that the body of that experience, not the hard time.
And amazingly wise. Are there any stories or teachings or sayings that you hold on to, that help you?
There are a few. One is a quote from Briston Maroney, my favorite artist, a singer, in one of his songs: “The closed door isn’t always locked.” This quote reminds me to not let fear hold me back from the many opportunities life has to offer.
Anything else?
There’s a beach by the marina in Scenic Estates by our property. When you go down there, you see all of the broken-up seashells in the sand, and I know that that’s something that we do, that Lummi people do. We always return the shells back to the water. So there’s just broken up oyster shells, and it covers most of the sand on the beach. Every time we see it, it reminds me that my people were here, they had meals here. The tide was out and the table was set here.
Julie Trimingham is a mother, writer, and non-tribal member of the Sacred Lands Conservancy (SacredSea.org), a Lhaq’temish-led non-profit dedicated to protecting Native sovereignty, treaty rights, sacred sites, and the life and waters of Xw’ullemy (the Salish Sea bioregion). Her heart is filled by the work to protect and promote ancestral place-based knowledge so that we can all learn to live here, with one another, and with Mother Earth, in a good way.
