Perched on nearby rocks, chairs and picnic tables, islanders and visitors gathered at Lime Kiln State Park Aug. 22 to listen to Coast Salish storyteller, drummer and flute player Chiyokten Paul Wagner. The event was a partnership between Friends of Lime Kiln and the nonprofits Preserving Knowledge of Land, Protectors of the Salish Sea and Alchemy Arts Center as well as Green Drinks and Washington State Park.
“We have lived here unseparated from every being around us, and we would give care and love to each one,” he told the crowd. His grandmother, he said, never spoke English, and his mother did not until she was eight years old, and only by duress.
“She didn’t want to. She loved her language,” Wagner said. He also reminded attendees that until 1978, it was illegal for indigenous cultures to celebrate their traditions, to tell their stories.
“It would have been illegal even to share what we’re sharing now, until 1978,” he said.
Wagner told the story of his grandmother and mother gathering plants to heal loved ones, illustrating the Coast Salish connection with the natural world.
“My Grandmother would speak to these medicine plants, she would explain and tell the story of her patient, her family member who is not well. She would tell that story and let these plants know exactly what was going on with this patient of hers. Then she would ask these plants to show themselves that they are good medicine for her family,” Wagner told the entranced crowd. “My Grandmother raised her hands to these plants in gratitude, and before she picked those plants, she gave a word of sacred promise, a sacred promise we made as Coast Salish people at the beginning of time, ‘we would only take part of you family to help my family.’”
Wagner engaged the crowd having them say Coast Salish words and names, including Selelakum, the generic term for all sea monsters. There is a variety of supernatural beings in the Coast Salish cultures, including little people, similar to Leprechauns, two types of mermaids, one good the other not so good, Thunderbird, and of course, Sasquatch.
Wagner encouraged the crowd make sound effects too, like whale sounds during the story of how Halibut, Sculpin and Flounder became flat after trying to save their grey whale friend. The grey whale fell on them after they tried to lift him up out of the sand.
He and family members also played the flute and drums. The songs swirled around the Madrone trees, passed the Lighthouse and echoed out across the still grey waters of the Salish Sea.
“In this art I created here,” Wagner told attendees, “I put humans at the bottom so that you could see them lifting up every other being because that is what our elders said.”
The Creator, he continued, put humans here last to lift up all the other ones that were put here before them.
“Do your best to have a good releatship with every being… and we will return this world to paradise.We can create paradise once again,” Wagner told the crowd.
Heather Spaulding \ Staff photo Chiyokten Paul Wagnert plays the flute.
Contributed photo by Sarah Leske Attendees scattered below the Lighthouse and holding a FOLKS sign on top of the Lighthouse while waving to Chris Teren who took photos from above via a drone.
