Collective Spirit Podcast

S2E16: James Pakootas (Confederated Tribes of Colville Reserve)

• First Peoples Fund • Season 2 • Episode 16

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This episode is a heartfelt exploration of "The Root Experience," where 2023 Cultural Capital Fellow James Pakootas (Confederated Tribes of Colville Reserve) unveils his journey to breathe new life into Native culture by weaving together the threads of ancestral tales with the vibrant energy of modern art forms. We embark on an auditory pilgrimage, traversing the landscape of historical narrative and contemporary issues, such as the influence of the Grand Coulee Dam on tribal life, all while championing the resurgence of indigenous identity through film, hip-hop, and dance.

Speaker 1:

So this has become a purpose of mine to begin a new beautiful circle of cultural reintroduction through contemporary forms, through film, through hip-hop, through contemporary indigenous dance, and using those new models of storytelling as a way to connect with our traditional forms.

Speaker 2:

First People's Fund presents the Collective Spirit Podcast. The Collective Spirit moves each of us to stand up and make a difference, to pass on ancestral knowledge and simply extend a hand of generosity. The Collective Spirit Podcast features Native artists and culture bearers who discuss the power of indigenous art and culture.

Speaker 1:

If ask, canchkeach koalamnom teatukupcha is the canchute. Stem tamul skeuchinch. Hello everybody, we've all arrived. Thank you for being here. My name is James Bacodas. Indian name is stem tamul skeuchinch, which means grizzly bear paw In the Moses Columbia dialect.

Speaker 1:

I am part Moses Columbia and it's a dialect where our last fluent speaker just died in the last couple years ago. So me introducing myself in our language is a form of revitalization and trying to keep a piece of our culture alive. It's really important to me through my work. I'm a performing artist producer, film director so I explore a lot of mediums in the form of storytelling.

Speaker 1:

I was born in Spokane, washington, close to our reservation, but lived all of my life like in Republic. Inchilim, cooley Dam, nespielum these are all four very small communities. Republic is off reservation but it resides in like the north half that was taken away from our people. So we still have hunting rights and land rights and water rights up there, but we just don't have the ownership of land. And that's where my mom's family is from, so from the Sample oil tribe of our people, we're from 12 different tribes and then on my dad's side they grew up in Inchilim, the home of the Sinai people, and some of my lineage breaks off into Nespielum tribe, calville tribe, moses, enneachaline, wenatchee a product of assimilation, of Catholicism, and settlers coming and quitting 12 different peoples on the same reservation. But even though living smack dab in the middle of my reservation, I didn't have a strong connection to my native culture. So it wasn't until all of my early 30s I'm 40 now, it's only 10 years or so that I've really been on this trek to find myself and come home to my people and come home to our traditions and our language and our ways. I'm a student now, back in a student mindset, learning our cultural ways, practices, truth and history so that young native boys and girls that were my age, living smack dab in the middle of the reservation, don't feel disconnected to their own culture like I did growing up. So this has become a like a purpose of mine to begin a new beautiful circle of cultural reintroduction through contemporary forms, through film, through hip hop, through contemporary indigenous dance, and using those new models of storytelling as a way to connect with our traditional forms and our traditional cultural knowledge and have those traditional ways, beliefs, practices, principles in form, the new Practices that we engage in art these days. We come from living cultures. We got to change, grow and adapt with them.

Speaker 1:

You know this projects in mid-production it's called the root experience and we applied as a duo. I was the applicant lead, but I own a Business here in Spokane called New Age Warriors with my best friend and brother, devonte Pearson, otherwise known as TS the solution, and he's black and I'm native. He has continuously shown up for all of our native communities. When I've got these hair-brained ideas to go back, and whether we're doing concert speaking events, workshops like whatever, always trying to engage with our school systems, I'm always trying to engage with our communities back home to further that Thought or that belief that they can be connected in their old community. That TS has been Like instrumental in coming back there with us.

Speaker 1:

This project, the root experience we wanted to see both of ourselves reflected in this story, reaching back into our native American Ancestry and talk about some of our old creation stories and do the same in his African ancestry and bring forth some of these creation stories. But yeah, it's the. It's the coming together of our traditional deities into a real-world problem which is connected to our tribes and 75% of our tribe is surrounded by the Columbia River. And as part of the public works projects. Back in the 20s and 30s, to get America out of the Depression, they built a Grand Coulee Dam and this sits right on the corner of our reservation and and while is a feat that provides electricity all across the West Western United States, it still stopped the run of salmon to the upper Columbia, into Canada, ever since that dam has been built. Two years ago I got to go with Fish and Wildlife and hold one of the one of the tails of the salmon as we let it go above the Grand Coulee Dam for the first time in 77 years.

Speaker 1:

So For us this piece is not only like a coming back of our cultures and trying to reach back into our cultures to tell a living story, but it's also the magnitude of what's happening to our peoples in present day because of colonialism, because of systematic oppression. So it's us, in our first attempt in theater, try to navigate these new ways of telling stories, of Reaching back into our past to tell something present, something that's needed and something that empowers our people. It's funny because we started this project pre-covid and Through the building of this project We've slowed things down into. It's funny. A new partner of ours from Canada uses this term, eleanor Stacy, from the Civic Theater in Nelson, british Columbia, moving at the speed of trust. And so this piece has been built very intentionally, very purposefully.

Speaker 1:

And some things that's happened in the history of our peoples, that are very Moments in history that we want to capture and we want to tell are very important, are two years ago our people won the reversal of an active extinction order in Canada. So the Seneich people are returning to Canada at a Supreme Court level have reversed in active extinction and with that the narrative that has always been told is that when the Seneich come back, so will the salmon to the upper Columbia. So this piece of the rude experience that we started before Covid, before that we started before these things have happened in history, just continues to point to our purpose and our intention of building this show. So now, with these historical things happening, we will be enveloping actual lived history of our peoples into the telling of this story of tradition, of fishing and the powers of our river Is, with that active extinction being reversed. Calville Confederated Tribal Business Council just traveled to Washington DC and signed in with President Biden Proving a 20-year program for the reintroduction of salmon to the upper Columbia above Grankeley Dam at the tune of 200 million dollars. So here we are building a show about salmon, building a show about returning to culture, when our peoples on the reservation we're sitting are actually being returned to their ancestral homelands. They're actually being returned some of the power of their language, their lands, their connection to each other and being returned to community, and so are the salmon.

Speaker 1:

It's a beautiful moment time in history to tell a story about our salmon with so much historical context, right now, in the living moment, aiding the storytelling and the structure of how we engage in community around this show. So any more, this is way bigger than a show. These are nation to nation building, this is the erasure of a border issue. These are so many different issues that we can bring to the table in educational speaking panels, in workshops, in masterclasses, in in the show itself. This is so much more than a theatrical show than it is an entire ecosystem Around the rights and protection of native peoples internationally, in Canada and the US. It's all. I'm excited to see what's gonna happen at the end and what the ending of our play will be after we find out the beauty and power of the lands in which we come from. So lots to be shared and lots to be told yet in this story.

Speaker 2:

The collective spirit podcast is produced by first peoples fund, whose mission is to honor and support indigenous artists and culture bearers through grant making initiatives, culturally rooted programming, and training and mentorship. Learn more at first peoples fund. Dot O R G.