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.
Smak i’ya’ | Photograph by Griffin Ritzo
Smak i’ya’ Matt Warbus has been working with the Lummi language department since 1999. In that capacity, he teaches Xwlemi chosen (Lummi language) and oksale (awk-saw-luh; leadership) classes to Lummi students at Ferndale High School. He is working to implement a cultural arts class where high school students can make their own ribbon skirts, regalia, cases for their drums, and other traditional arts. Smak i’ya’s grandmother taught him how to sew when he was very young, and he now owns and operates an embroidery business, working with everything from jackets to caps to drum bags. He also teaches basketry and flute-making at Northwest Indian College.
Smak i’ya’, you lead a busy, creative life. Many of us know you as a language teacher. What is your relationship to the Lummi language?
I didn’t grow up speaking it. I didn’t grow up hearing it. When I first started with the language, I was in high school, back in 1991. Bill James would come in and teach a Lummi language class, that was my introduction. After high school, I took some language classes at Northwest Indian College. Then, while I was a student at Western Washington University, I took a linguistics class. I signed up for it because I needed more credits, I didn’t think it would ever come into play with anything that I was going to do. But I sat and I listened and I watched, paid attention, and asked questions. After being at Western for a year, I was asked to work for the tribe on the Semiahmoo project.
The Semiahmoo project?
At the time (1998), the City of Blaine was trying to expand their water sewer treatment plant, and in the process, they disturbed an ancient burial site. They would dig out all this sand and rock and gravel, the bones of our ancestors, put it into trucks, and go all around Whatcom County, saying, Hey, we got some free fill. They’d dump it all at these different sites. I got to be a part of the work to reclaim the remains that were dug up. We would go to all those sites where they were dumping and collect as many remains as we could. We were going to bury them again, and we did. Bringing them home and letting them rest where they originally came from was the most important part of the journey. The tribe wanted us to be able to speak the language as we did the work, so every morning, we would have a Lummi language class for 30 minutes. It was our ancestors that we were taking care of, the ancestors were there with us. The ancestors never spoke English, we need to speak to them in our language so that they understand. It’s a sign of respect. When we do important work, we speak not only to the people right in front of us, we speak to our ancestors, too. This is our connection.
So the language is important spiritually?
The language is the foundation to who we are. It’s the foundation to our culture. You think about our song and dance, we incorporate the language. You talk about our cultural arts, basketry, carving, anything that is cultural, artistic, we incorporate the Lummi language. All our ceremonies are in our language. The more that we can understand our language, and how it’s part of everything that we do, the better we will understand who we are, where we come from, and why we do what we do.
I was lucky enough to spend some time with the late Ts’i li’ xw Bill James. We were out on the water once, and he was teaching me the word for seagull. Kweni (kw-uh-nee’). I had a hard time pronouncing it, and he said, “It says its own name.” Meaning, the sound it makes is like its name in the language. It seems like the language springs from this very place, from nature.
Yes, in some cases, with the names for creatures, they do follow with the sound that they make. So I’m going to give you an example. The word for crab is Atchx (at-ch-q’). Atchx.
It’s the sound that they make when they’re molting their shell. The shell separates, and it makes that sound. Atchx.
Is there any particular saying or teaching or story or image that you hold close to your heart?
As far as like an image, as far as like an item, as far as like a story. It has to be the snekwe (sn-uck-w-uh), which is the blue heron. I remember when I first started working in our Lummi language department, I basically talked loud enough so that I could hear myself and nobody else could hear me. The late Bill James was my boss, and he came in one day. Oh, come here, I got something for you. And he pulls out this really long snekwe feather. He pulls it out, and he holds it up, and he’s showing it to me. He’s like, I got you this snekwe feather because I need you to work on your volume when you’re speaking. And he’s like, So what you’re supposed to do with this feather is you’re supposed to clear out your throat, you put it down your throat and when you pull it out, then that’s going to help you speak loudly and clearly so that people can hear you.
He had such a sense of humor. Wise, but often with a twinkle in his eye.
Yeah, he knew exactly what he was doing. And I still have that sacred feather with me.
Hy’sxwqe, Smak i’ya’.
Julie Trimingham
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.
