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 (Lummi), 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.
Swil Kanim is a Lummi tribal member. He performs widely as a violinist, motivational speaker, and storyteller. He is a United States Army veteran. He currently sits on the board of the Seattle Symphony, and works with the Kiwanis in programs that focus on the wellness of children.
How do you describe yourself?
I’m a violinist, but my music and my performances are really just a strategy for creating connection with people.
And how did you come to be where you are now?
Well, my music is a direct product of a well-supported public school music program. I would not be alive if it wasn’t for a public school music program. I believe that the traumas of being a foster kid would have eventually got me if I didn’t learn how to process my feelings in an effective way through music. After school, I joined the army. While there, I realized that the traumas of my childhood were having an effect on my adult behavior. I went into therapy and became an advocate for behavioral and mental health. I realized the value of self expression and community, of finding a safe place to honor the feelings that we put aside in order to survive the traumas of our childhoods. And it’s been a wonderful life, a wonderful experience, expressing myself in a way that helps other people see their own stories and heal.
You’ve mentioned trauma and also being a foster kid.
I was taken from my Lummi home and put into a white home when I was about 5. There were difficulties when I was on the reservation, but I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was loved. A lot of the trauma from that time comes from the notion that I was rescued from my tribe. It’s real that my foster parents provided food, clothing, and shelter. But my name was changed. I was denied my identity. They thought they were saving me from a culture of poverty and abuse, when actually government policy had created the intergenerational traumas and poverty they claimed to be saving me from.
The recent Supreme Court decision to uphold the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) was one that was celebrated by a lot of tribes, because it strives to keep Native kids in their communities.
Yes, in the 1970s, up to 35% of Native American kids were snatched away from their tribes and fostered out, adopted out, or institutionalized.
I know that most parents who bring kids into their home by fostering or adopting simply want a family, they’re acting out of love, so I’ve been trying to understand why ICWA is so important. I’ve also been trying to understand the term “cultural genocide,” which I think means that a people is killed when everything that makes them a people is taken away.
When you bring up the fact that a huge number of Native kids were forcibly removed from their families and stripped of their language, culture, ancestral home grounds, and kinship bonds, are you talking about a policy that says it’s about an individual child’s welfare but actually has another agenda?
Yes, there have always been governmental forces that want to end tribal sovereignty. And it sounds harsh to say it, because I know good-hearted, kind people have a hard time believing that we are still a racist nation. But it’s the system that we were all born into.
I overcame the oppression that I internalized by embracing the love and the wisdom of my elders and ancestors. And recognizing that if I can show others how to overcome the internalized oppressions that we hold as a nation, then we can truly be the land of the free and the home of the brave.
What do you like to do for fun, or to restore yourself?
You know, it’s so funny. I am a Mariners fan, like big time. I love to go and scream at baseball games. That gives me great joy. I love baseball. I love high fiving the people around me when a great play happens.
Is there a teaching, a story, or a quote that you hang onto?
Do your best, pray it’s blessed, and let the great spirit of love take care of the rest.
Hy’shqe. Thank you.
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.
