2025 Xaalh and the Way of the Masks: Honoring Ourselves, the Lands, Waters, and Forests

The two-week campaign in September of 2025 held events in tribal communities, public venues and places of worship in the Pacific Northwest and Northern California.  It brought attention to the emergent and urgent threats of the Trump Administration to indigenous lands, waters, forests, and lifeways in the Pacific Northwest.

2025 Towards a Just Transition: Indigenous Self-Determination

As part of its series of International Indigenous Forums, Se’Si’Le was honored to work with Batani:  International Indigenous Fund for Development and Sovereignty to bring to the Orcas Center indigenous leaders from Siberia and the Russian Far East exiled by the Russian government on April 16, 2025.

June 2025  A Majestic Matriarchy: Honoring Our Relatives Below the Waves

This event was held in June of 2025 to 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. 

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.

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.

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.