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
Laural Ballew has worked previously for Lummi Nation as Grant Manager and Budget Officer and at the Northwest Indian College as Department Chair for Tribal Governance and Business Management program, and is now Executive Director of Tribal Relations and Tribal Liaison to the President for Western Washington University.
I introduce myself with my traditional names; I have two. My first one is ses yehomia, which is my Lummi given name, and my other is tsi kuts bat soot which is a female version of my late father’s name. I am a Swinomish tribal member living on Lummi. I can follow my family roots back to Nooksack, the Aleutian Islands, Sauk-Suaittle on my mother’s side, Marie Charles and Swinomish, Lower Skagit, and Suquamish on my father’s side, Claude Wilbur Sr.
How and where did you grow up?
I love to share this. I love to say that I came from a small village, which is the Swinomish Tribal Community. When I grew up, it was just a couple roads through the reservation, and my home was smack dab in the middle, right behind the Catholic Church. I had a wonderful childhood. I had my parents and four other siblings: two older brothers, Claude Jr. and Jimmy, and an older sister, Lisa, and younger sister, Lona. My mother’s father had built our home, and it was the stopping place for all of my cousins and aunts and uncles. Everyone would just stop in and have a cup of coffee or to chat or see what’s going on in the rez. My mom worked for the tribe as a secretary, and my dad was either logging or fishing. He was also the Tribal Recreation Director and also managed the tribal fish plant. I went to school across the slough, at that time we could actually swim in the slough. We spent summers beach seining out at Lone Tree Point, which was one road in, like Portage Island, so you had to beat the tide if you were going or staying. Family dinners on Sunday, we’d gather at my grandparents homestead, which was down on the flats, or at our house. Big, big focus on family. And education was important with my parents and grandparents.
How has that focus on education played out for you?
I am a first-generation college graduate for my immediate family. My parents had already decided that I would go to Gonzaga University. My older cousin had graduated from there, it was a college, and it was Catholic, and so, it was decided. But I should back up, because Red Square, here on the Western campus, has a deep importance to me.
Back in 1969, this is where I met my husband. We were attending a summer program called Project Catch Up, a summer program where they brought in Native junior and high school youth to attend summer courses. We stayed in the dorms, and that’s where I met a lot of my Lummi friends and my husband Tim Ballew Sr. I am also a graduate of WWU so coming back to Western now, this seems like full-circle for me.
So how did you come to complete that circle, what brought you back to WWU?
In 2016, Native students wrote a letter to the President and Board of Trustees. It was the first year they couldn’t hold the annual Native American Student Union pow wow because there weren’t enough students and there wasn’t enough funding. They were tired and frustrated. In the letter, they asked for five things: full funding for the Powwow; a Native American Student Union; a Tribal Liaison; verification of Native student enrollment; and for a longhouse to be built. I was brought in as Tribal Liaison, and then we worked towards those other four goals. I’m happy to say that Western has now met all five of those original goals.
The House of Healing longhouse is almost done, isn’t it?
The outside structure is near completion; they are working on the landscaping and on the inside now. We’ve got a huge kitchen with an outside sink and a fire pit for preparing traditional dishes for food sovereignty classes. We’ll have wellness resources. There’ll be a lounge area, an area for the students to work on their projects, everything from beading to studying. A longhouse committee of tribal elders, community members, and students met for a year to develop the concept and we’ve got an in-house advisory group that meets monthly to work on programs and how we want to fill the space. We envision holding a speaker series and an annual indigenous gathering. My biggest dream is to see a bachelor’s degree in Indigenous studies and then a master’s program in tribal governance.
It sounds like some of what you’re doing is bringing Indigenous ways of knowing into Western educational institutions?
When I graduated from Evergreen in tribal governance, there were no textbooks. Everything was photocopied from other Native scholars. Where was our knowledge? I don’t pretend to be an expert—I’m not. I’m just this girl from a small village. But what I know is what my grandparents and my parents shared with me, and I can verify that, because it goes back hundreds of years. That’s how we’ve learned. So if you want to recognize us, you have to recognize our ways of knowing, ways of being. I carry this with my ancestors, I carry this every day. These ways have kept us here. There is validity to this. That’s what I want to do: give accreditation to our ways of knowing.
Hy’shqe, Laural!
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.
