Indigeneity, Ecology, and Cross-Cultural Collaboration
Se’Si’Le is dedicated to promoting a deeper understanding of indigenous knowledge and how we can best appreciate the nature of Nature.
“We sit in the lap of Mother Earth learning all there is to learn…
not all at once, but built up over a lifetime, every day.
We need to keep learning.
To never quit learning.”
-- Lummi Elder --
We endeavor through publications, workshops, seminars, symposia, and…
Towards a Just Transition: Indigenous Self-Determination
April 14-18, 2025
As part of its series of International Indigenous Forums, Se’Si’Le is honored to work with Batani: International Indigenous Fund for Development and Sovereignty to bring to the Orcas Center on April 16 from 6:00-8:00 PM indigenous leaders from Siberia and the Russian Far East exiled by the Russian government.
These leaders are holding a retreat on Orcas Island from April…
A Majestic Matriarchy: Honoring Our Relatives Below the Waves
June 2025
This event will be held in June of 2025 and will inspire a renewed and more profound understanding of the ancient and holistic relationalities between the Sk’aliCh’elh (Southern Resident Killer Whales), scha’enexw (the Salmon People), the spirit in the waters (Tsi’Uid), and the lifeways of Native Nations in the Salish Sea bioregion. The event will be held in Seattle and will raise up…
Leng-e-sot: Caring for Ourselves and All Our Relations
Summer 2025
Se’Si’Le will inaugurate a field school in the Summer of 2025 on San Juan Island and Orcas Island for students and faculty from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The field school will introduce the participants to Indigenous ancestral knowledge and ways of knowing nature and its personhood, and how to use this knowledge preserve natural and cultural heritage landscapes and…
elhtel’nexw—the International Indigenous Forest Forum
Fall 2025
The Forum will take place in the Fall of 2025 in Seattle. It will draw on ancestral knowledge to further empower and inspire Indigenous-led environmental forest-related campaigns and their non-Indigenous allies and partners. Invitees will include Indigenous peoples from Boreal, Temperate, and Tropical Rainforests.
PAST EVENTS
2024 Tribute to the Orca Conference at the Seattle Aquarium
Se’Si’Le coordinated over a dozen Salish Sea Native Nations and NGOs for an Indigenous- centered public event during Orca Action Month in June, 2024 to a full house at the Seattle Aquarium. All Our Relations A Tribute to the Orca is a deeply-moving seven-minute film drawing on footage from this event.
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2023 Tokitae, Celebration of Life
The Honoring of Sk’ali’Chelh-tenaut (aka Tokitae)
August 27, 2023 - Jackson Beach, San Juan Island, WA
Sk’ali’Chelh-tenaut had an ancient kinship relation with the Lummi people. She was violently and viciously taken from her Salish Sea orca family in 1970 and forced to labor for profit on behalf of Miami Seaquarium for 52 years. Finally, she was allowed to rest and, with the work of the Lummi and their allies, was freed and being made ready for her return to her native waters in the Salish Sea.
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2022 International Indigenous Salmon Seas Symposium
The indigenous participants at the Symposium were brought together, in a time of crisis, by the force of ancient and enduring kinship relations with Nature and, through Her, with each other. They gathered to share knowledge, ceremony, and strategies in support of salmon-dependent lifeways across three imperiled salmon sea bioregions: Lummi and Yakama tribal members from the Salish Sea, representatives from the Organized Village of Kake and the United Tribes of Bristol Bay in the Gulf of Alaska, and indigenous peoples from the Udege and the Itelmen Peoples of the Russian Far East.
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