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Spring Fund Drive

The on-air portion of our fund drive has ended, but there's still time to help close the gap in our overall goal by March 31st. If you've yet to donate, please give now! If you've already supported or are a sustaining donor to KBCS, thank you so much!

$110,000 Goal

98.11%

Drive ends: March 31, 2024

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Learning Lushootseed in an Environment of Intergenerational Trauma (aired August 2023)

 
According to the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), indigenous language learning is increasing in Canada.  Tribes in our region have established multiple language programs to teach Lushootseed, the language of the Coast Salish in the Greater Seattle Area, north to Skagit River Valley, and Whidbey Island, and south to Olympia and Shelton.  At the Tulalip Tribe, Lushootseed Department Manager, Michele Balagot describes her experience learning Lushootseed in a household where her loved ones had experienced the American Indian residential schools.
 
Producers: Yuko Kodama and Lucy Braginski
Photo: Tulalip tribe 

Tribal Canoe Journey 2023 Protocol (aired August 2023)

The InterTribal Canoe Journey, otherwise referred to as “canoe journey” or “tribal journey” are a Coast Salish tribal event to bring back the ancestral cultural ways of using cedars canoes on the Salish Sea as a means to live in relation. Canoe journeys started in the 1980s and have grown over the years.   

Muckleshoot Tribe hosted Intertribal Canoe Journey 2023, welcoming 120 canoes to its shores.  Canoe families came from as far north as Juneau Alaska, British Columbia’s Campbell River and Ahousat areas, and as far south as Southern California. 

On August 6, the 2023 Intertribal Canoe Journey ended with protocol at Muckleshoot.  Listen to sounds and voices of the people there.

Producers: Yuko Kodama, Lucy Braginski and Widder Sessions – Special thanks to Maizy Brown Bear for help with this story

Photos: Widder Sessions and Maizy Brown Bear

Muckleshoot protocol

Line for dinner at Muckleshoot canoe journey protocol

Danny Stevenson – Muckleshoot tribal member

Jenel Hunter Muckleshoot tribal member

Stanley Jones Cowichan First Nations and Katrina “Alex” Johnson Ahousaht/Mowachaht First Nations (British Columbia)

Teaching Lushootseed to Toddlers

Lushootseed  is the language spoken by Coast Salish tribes in the greater Seattle area and north to Skagit River Valley near Bellingham and Whidbey Island, and south to Olympia and Shelton. In 1819, Congress passed the Civilization Fund Act to assimilate indigenous youth to western culture.  The policy authorized forcible separation of indigenous children from their families to be sent to boarding schools far away, where they were to be stripped of their language, culture and religious practices.  It wasn’t until the 1970’s that this practice was outlawed.  This caused a severe disruption in likelihood for traditional practices and lifestyles to continue.

Today, members of these communities are reawakening their native tongue through education to everyone from 6 month olds, elementary and high school students and adults.

Jasmyne Diaz is an enrolled Tulalip member and shares a peek into her work of teaching Lushootseed language as a Teacher Assistant to  six-month to two-year old children in Tulalip, Washington through the Tulalip Lushootseed Language Program

Producers: Laura Florez and Yuko Kodama

Jasmyne Diaz

Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women 1 – What’s Needed

Roxanne White, of the Yakama, Nez Perce, Nooksack and Gros Ventre tribes, is an activist who advocates for the families of missing and murdered women (MMIW).  KBCS’s Yuko Kodama spoke with White about the MMIW movement at an indigenous prayer skirt sewing circle organized as a community building event in honor of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women.

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Nature: The Western Red Cedar and Native Tribes

KBCS’s Yuko Kodama spoke with Ed Dominguez, Seward Park Audubon Center Lead Naturalist, about one tree that was the Tree of Life for the local Duwamish people: the Western Red Cedar.

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