An Interview With Marva Sii~Xuutesna Jones
Describe who you are and your relationship to local lands.
Shii Sii~xuutesna nvshli~ (My name is Sii~xuutesna.) I carry the name of my third great-auntie, meaning “bowing ocean wave.” I am so thankful to carry this name forward with great care. I was raised on the banks of the Tolowa (Smith) River at my maternal village of Nii~lii~chvndvn (at the foot of the riffle place). I was fortunate enough to be raised in a home where Mother Earth mattered. My dear daysri grandparents, Eunice Xashweetesna Henry-Bommelyn and James Bommelyn, who both transferred their very strong loving ties with our ocean, river, and mountains to our family. I also come from the villages of Mvn’srayme’, ‘Enchwa on the Tolowa River, Wechpues, Wohsekw and Ti Bar along the Klamath River. I am a Tolowa Deeni’, Yurok, Karuk and Wintu woman.
My daysri sru’ (grandma) was the youngest of nine and the last fluent Tolowa speaker for our people, where Tolowa was her first language and being Tolowa was natural. She lived a very active, strong, loving, and humble life filled with the richness of our people, activism, service, advocacy, and purpose. Despite all the life-altering devastation we’ve experienced as a people, we still carry that deep sense of love in all we do. My daysri sru’ was never raised in shame and I am so thankful to come from a home that nurtured love, care, and consideration. She was a true matriarch who lived life rooted in truth even when it was greeted with great opposition. She nurtured a legacy of ancestral worldview offering it openly to anyone who paid attention.
Being raised by such dedication to the survivance of our worldview has made lasting impacts into the hearts of her descendants, specifically a value I fiercely carry forward. I, too, pass on this love of our homelands, ways of viewing the world and service to my children. Daysri sru’ was very instrumental in reclaiming spaces for our language and heritage to thrive and not just survive. I only hope to be a fraction of her in all that I do and have spent my life ensuring our Indigenous voice and lens are manifested through my children.
I have three amazing children; Ch’vski (25), Nants’vn (18) and Teexeeshe’ (14) and one new grandson, Yaame’ta (6 mos.). I carry a very deliberate place-based relationship with our homelands and am so very thankful to be able to engage with our reciprocal rhythms, natural cycles, and seasonal offerings.
Our amazingly blessed river, lifegiving ocean, and sustaining mountain cultures engage every part of my life. Upholding this relationship as sacred, through deliberate acknowledgement and care offers a deepened essence which only Nvnnvsta~ (Mother Earth) can provide. Our abundant homelands offer us great health, wellness, opportunity, balance, healing, and sustenance. Engaging with strong harvesting practices of our food systems, materials, medicines, and spiritual engagements fosters and builds our responsibility in this reciprocal exchange. We are the same as Nvnnvsta~, we are made of stardust and our health and healing rely upon this foundation.
What does cultural preservation mean to you?
Cultural preservation is a purposeful act not left to chance but reinforced by responsibility. It comes in the way we live, what we value, how we look at the world and how we nurture these aspects of our lives. Culture shows up in our actions of endorsing our ways of practice. When you’re young and growing up, you don’t realize how vital these ways of living truly are. Being involved with ancestral practices throughout every institution and choosing to model these practices with our babes means whether they thrive or not. It’s the energy we place into our teachings with great care.
It’s carrying gratitude throughout all that we are. It’s trust we nurture and enhance by loving example. It’s ensuring that my offspring never wonder what fresh sturgeon tastes like. It’s feeling the hot and sizzling sun rays on my shoulders while we sun dry our surf fish at Yaaghii~’a~, where my family has done it for millennia. It’s making sure that my kids know how to sing our Needash sheene’ (songs) passed down for generations to secure balance in this world.
It’s watching the shadows of our dancers cast on the dance house wall from the manzanita fire as we dance till the break of dawn in celebration of Mother Earth. It’s knowing that my kids will always greet the day in pray. It’s always carried in our give. It’s making sure to always include others beyond myself. It’s knowing without a doubt that we will always know who we are, where we come from, and how to heal ourselves. It’s seeing and feeling the reassurances of our blessings.
It’s never taking anything for granted. It’s the appreciation of everything this world has provided us. It’s never losing touch with our ancestral commitments made by my ancestors, generations old. It’s never compromising our values for a dollar. It’s never questioning whether our identity is worth the effort.
It’s hearing my daughter speaking Tolowa to my grandson. It’s seeing my kids be an example to others in their endeavors. It’s modeling our responsibilities and giving back to Mother Earth. It’s teaching my kids how to make acorn mush with hot cooking rocks we gathered at the river. It’s helping my son smoke his catch of eels and seeing his eyes sparkle with delight. It’s picking seaweed in the springtime’s early morning with my children on the shores of our beaches where my grandma showed me how. It’s making sure to acknowledge the berry’s life as we pluck it from its branch.
It’s watching my mom show her technique of stripping fish while talking story to my daughter. It’s scraping the meat off the salmon’s backbone in an effort to not waste a thing. It’s understanding why we don’t overharvest our places for next year’s harvest. It’s practicing all our spiritual protocols with loving respect.
It’s turning circular to the left as we enter and leave the cemetery. It’s in the meal we serve our loved ones who have passed away for the first five days they are gone. It’s always greeting an elder with loving gesture as they enter a room. It’s rocking my grandson to sleep in his gayyu (baby basket) and singing him a well-seasoned lullaby passed down by my family. It’s clapping our hands at specific places as we pass. It’s telling our swamp tea shu’ ‘aashii ninla (thank you) for their sustenance as we pick them for our elders. It’s the way we always greet the river in gratitude. It’s reciting formulas during our time in the forest. It’s remembering that we are meant to be here despite horrific atrocities we endured.
It’s knowing that ancient ancestral medicine was made to always protect us. It’s knowing the villages we descend from. It’s living in love, balance, and happiness no matter what our challenges.
Nants’vn Jones-Scott (February 2023, from Sii~xuutesna Jones Archives)
Can you share about your family’s intergenerational struggles to preserve cultural lifeways?
Much trauma, confusion, loss, death, and upheaval resulted from the deliberate attack on our psycho-socio-environmental foundations within our communities and homelands. The invasion of settler-colonial destructions, structures and systems have caused grave breakdown in the transmission and acceptance of who we truly are.
These efforts to exterminate my people came through the intruder’s rush for gold in 1846 and the offer of a wealthy bounty for the scalps of my people. It was more lucrative to hunt us than to pan for gold. The stealing of our homeland was deliberate, supported and funded by the United States governmental laws and practices.
My very own maternal family (my great-great-great-grandma’s parents) were murdered defending our home by not leaving it and sending their kids (my great-great-gram) to other family for survivance. The Peacock family who murdered my family is still celebrated today. White privilege and deadly entitlement triumphed and plagued our homelands and this ethnocentrism is often upheld yet today. Streets, parks, statues, towns, roads, beaches, trails, our river, and rocks are all named in honor of these killers.
Great healing is a lifelong action promoted with delicate ancestral love. Protection medicine was made generations ago for our very existence. I always tell my kids that we must be forever thankful for this medicine, and we must carry it forward. Every single act to exterminate us was made and it truly is a gift that we are still here speaking our language, eating our foods, singing our songs, sharing our stories, teaching our babes, and carrying our truths.
Thankfully my grandmother was hidden when they were taking children from their homes as a vicious act to acculturate our very Earth-based souls, coining the term, “Kill the Indian to save the man.” Of course, and unfortunately, we are still exposed to and raised in the very disconnected Amerikkkan society that holds no value for others or Mother Earth herself. Our worldviews are polar opposite as it manifests today with the world’s sickly conditions.
Balance is key to our survival. Balance is a common thread we tread throughout all our decisions. Critical care of what really matters is always a comprehensive task. In holding onto what we value, compromises must be made. Distractions of modern day Amerikkka play an essential role. Making our decisions to uphold traditional values and ancestral care in a time where we must fight to keep them alive is an amazing responsibility. Being a minority (ancestral-driven) mindset and holding onto our instincts through practice shows in our actions. Giving our energy to these radical values and organic practices also means taking the hits from your very own people who have left our ancestral value behind. But trusting my heart is a lineal strength which I lead with at all costs.
A teaching that I reference daily, is to always check in with my spirit. If it feels good, then do it. Lead with my intuition, trust myself through my intention. We are the reminder of a different view; we are the reminder that money is not our god. We are the reminder that instant gratification and single-use waste lifestyles are not our values. We are the reminder that capitalism isn’t meant to destroy our lives, rivers, land, and air at all costs. We are here to give purpose and voice of our existence in exerting our truths in spaces and places we call home.
My grandmother told me she was never raised to be ashamed of who she was even despite racial violence and complete racism. I, too, carry this self-love, ancestral love forward to my children. I have never been ashamed of my bloodline as we always recall how amazing it is for us to even be here as a people. Fortunately, my grandmother was hidden during the times when children were stolen from their families and sent to Christian boarding schools to acculturate and assimilate. Without this act of protection for my grandma by her parents, we would be lost and without our ways.
Asserting our place and our voice has always been met with opposition, most disturbing, by our tribal peoples who may hold little to no value with our ancestral ways of living. Pondering my struggles and experiences, I recall a very hurtful experience. I was attacked for saying, Shu’ shaa ninla (Tolowa) or Wokhlaw (Yurok), which means “good-you’ve-done-for-me” or “thank you” as acknowledgement while working at Elk Valley Casino as a bingo caller. By my own tribal people and cousin, I was attacked for using my languages over English. Amazingly, this is a Tolowa casino where I only used the term eight (8) times a night. I left that job because I value my choice to use my languages. I’ve never stopped using this term as I continue to use the term I was raised with today. Lateral oppression and self-hate plague our communities yet today as a consequence of settler colonization. It is a place of backlash when someone holds traditional ancestral values and practices. It’s a place of judgment by others. Others who have left these practices and replaced them with other values, “who does she think she is?” These other people judge harshly about things they don’t even do or practice. It’s amazing, these experiences have made me even more dedicated to my commitments to my lineage. But we continue to celebrate and practice these ancestral teachings through inclusion into everything we do.
Another example of very intense experiences of endorsing our cultural survivance is an annual challenge while we use traditional methods of drying our fish. We have fought and continue to exert our sovereignty with the greedy, gated community that sits on the bluff above our traditional fish camp for years in effort to keep our traditional fish drying practices alive. Even with the easement authorization resolution by the Del Norte County Board of Supervisors endorsement, we still deal with racism every single year. The racist bigots we deal with are wealthy settler people who despise our very presence in a place we have known, and it knows us, for millennia. These vicious privileged racists are aware of our annual presence prior to purchasing their lucrative homes. They know that we will be drying fish there two to three weeks every summer as it is written in their homeowner’s declaration of covenants, conditions and restrictions. Yet they exert their white privileged false sense of selves by placing huge boulders, shards of metal in our camp trails, metal stakes that display “no trespassing” signage in the middle of our fish camp every single year. A whole day of clearing our spot is needed to set up camp each year.
These white faces always change and yet the energy is still the same from that gated community on the bluff. Less than one percent of our community dries fish yet today. There are only two (2) families who dry fish from a whole west coastline which make up several tribal communities. We’ve had to call the police for verbal and physical harassment, purposeful noise and light pollution, vandalized vehicles, stolen property, and blocked access.
We will never stop drying our fish at Yaaghii~’a~, the home of the little people, ever. These acts of violence will not stop us living who we are. This is why it is imperative to teach our babes our values. Survivance comes with steadfast commitment united in love, and I am so very thankful to be raised and to raise my babes in strength and truth. These experiences of cultural survivance, although painful, are worth more than these struggles, as we always heal and move forward in a good way no matter what.
What specific barriers have you and your family experienced in continuing your culture? Do these barriers still exist today?
There are a myriad of causes which have led to the complex barriers and challenges in uplifting culture. Vast degrees of healing, understanding, and reconciliation with great emotional and socio-psychology responses to our trauma make for varying grades and degrees of preservation. I often lose sleep thinking about the barriers and challenges we face daily. We are in a very fragile state of hooking few in our place-based connections as a real necessity to our wellness. I often ponder how to make our fragile status reversed.
Currently, we are struggling to save our language from complete extinction. It’s a deep commitment to make space for our cultural approaches. It’s lots of work to process our foods, and most of our materials and medicines. Lots of patience is required. Being in sync with our natural world’s cycles is a beautiful dance. The ability of keeping our sacred, sacred is well-worth the dedication. Keeping our values valued gives me anxiety at times when these things get pushed aside for other less worthy motivations. I worry about these impacts and am praying we are making a difference. Taking a true claim of responsibility is necessary in these efforts. In hopes to inspire and bring life into our practices so that they flourish in real time and meaning is the charge.
An obvious barrier is living in western society where acculturation and ethnocentrism thrive. The constant exposure to settler values has taken a very strong hold. Seeing and living through the settler-colonial lens is a definite concern.
Upholding our worldview through our language is beautiful but held onto by a very few. Our very own view of the world is shared in our language’s etymology. Parsing the meaning of our words is a very deep way to share our ancestral views. Securing funding by our nation’s annual budget has yet to meet the needs of our near-extinct language and cultural approaches. We primarily use grant funds to support these efforts. We say we value these things, yet these efforts must be reminded, reclaimed, re-evaluated and re-established every single year.
Western-minded values often supersede the securing of traditional and ancestral approaches. Great ideas and purpose get waylaid by who is doing the work. Politics operate on very heavy twisted terms and our youth pay the price. People with ancestral knowledge are often undervalued and often discriminated against. It’s like one is supposed to be punished and made to feel bad for believing and living with our ancestral focus. It’s a gross act that I experience often.
I asked my grandmother how she dealt with these hurtful actions. She told me to not take it inside of myself. She told me to let it be them, let it run off you like water off a duck’s head, send them love and pray that their hearts and minds can get touched. I often do this, but at times it is extremely difficult when your work and effort to uphold these things that keep us whole are attacked.
Prayer is key in our healing. My grandmother was raised in a clean and honest home, she chose to raise us in a clean and honest home. She chose to celebrate our indigenousness and that’s what I choose too. We just held a vigil for the ancestors murdered at the mouth of the Chetco River, and in acknowledging this loss, only three Tribal Council leaders showed out of seven. A once-a-year event held at different known holocaust sites, we do this to bring about healing. To really lead and value our ancestral connections, sacred places, ceremonies, and actions, one must participate. Again, it’s all about what you hold value and if it’s not a value, it’s not a value. Participation is sparse in these functions and commitments and it’s usually the same people who participate. Others claim that it’s important but few put action behind those words. Showing up is an important piece to our healing.
Nants’vn Jones-Scott and Teexeeshe’ Jones-Scott (July 2022, from Sii~xuutesna Jones Archives)
What are some examples of victories/triumphs in cultural preservation work?
Some current victories of cultural preservation today are the reclaiming of places. The “landback” initiative isn’t a new concept but is currently an action that is bringing about the consciousness of its very deep and comprehensive purposes.
When I hear the term landback, I feel it so much deeper than returning our stolen land back to our peoples. To me, it means getting in touch with land, really experiencing the dirt on your feet; it’s the touching of the acorn as you hold it in your hand. It’s the rain against your face while fishing for steelhead. It’s admiring the mallards in the river swimming together. It’s gazing at the Great Blue Heron as it stands in the stream. It’s that first piece of seaweed you eat at the rock at your first harvest morning. It’s getting back on the land, reconnecting with place and really absorbing that relationship.
In these landback efforts, much support has been provided by the California State Parks (CSP) and Redwood National State Parks (RNSP) leadership with our land acknowledgements through reclaiming of spaces and places. Recently, the reclaiming of names is happening around the nation. We are currently renaming ten park trails in the Tolowa Dunes Park system. The land acknowledgements are powerful steps in a direction of acceptance and understanding of who we really are.
The “Grove of Titans” landmark is using our Tolowa language to share with the public about these majestic ancestors we call K’vshchu (redwoods). We are currently moving towards renaming whole park systems with their original names. We hope to rename schools and especially our river. The time of truth is necessary and greatly supported by land managers.
Just in a few weeks, we will be cooking fish beside an open fire while making sandbread in a pit next to the river at Chvnsu’lhdvn (Red Elderberry Place) at Jedediah Smith State Park as an act of sovereignty. The first time this has been done in this village in over one hundred and thirty years. Remarkable acts and I get to help provide, prepare, and serve the food.
We are almost done carving two old-growth redwood dugout canoes which hasn’t been done in over one hundred and thirty years, too. These canoes will be birthed in ceremony and acknowledged in a very sacred manner using ancestral protocols. The accomplishment of carving new canoes has provided a great impact within our community, and they were not possible without the collaboration with an esteemed Yurok carver and the California State Parks leadership.
We built a new smoke house for the first time ever in offering smoked fish to the community, specifically our elders. Teaching our children how to process, prepare, smoke and can fish is priceless. Many of the youth experienced smoking fish for the first time ever. These are things some of us take as a regular practice and seeing the impacts and hearing the youth’s happiness is undeniable.
Another great reclaim is our Ch’a~lhday wvn Srdee-yvn (Flower Dance) which is a coming-of-age ceremony we hold for our young ladies as an acknowledgement of their womanhood. This sacred act offers our young women a place of value and their role in our community. This comprehensive ceremony upholds the young woman’s medicine through this celebration and gives credence to their very existence as a powerful leader as a woman. Our medicine is deep and reclaiming this ceremony is a true act of recognition.
We are currently working with the City of Crescent City on a total inclusion of Tolowa cultural perspectives with story, place and value, in the multimillion-dollar project to rebuild the beach front area. Tolowa interpretation in ten key places along the beachfront will be featured. I get to narrate a few of the stories on these featured videos. We will be included in this approach of reclaiming our spaces which has never been accomplished ever. The City of Crescent City and the County of Del Norte have endorsed Indigenous Peoples Day in lieu of Columbus Day, without a forced approach. That was a huge win for our people to accomplish without a fight, especially coming from a very Trump community with known struggles around every single subject related to these governments of the past.
Progressive-minded and Indigenous-included leadership who are able to see the value of working with my people are taking hold in key positions. It’s amazing and rewarding to witness in my lifetime and I really wish my grandmother was here to witness it too. We often spoke about this topic and all the work she did to accomplish small/big things and ways of endorsing our important roles in our own communities.
We just hosted a cultural exchange with Shinnecock, Aquinnah Wampanoag, Kua’iana Ulu’Auama, and Coquille tribal leaders from the East Coast, Oregon, and Hawaii with some of them having never been to California. The powerful connection regarding the impacts of wind energy and how we will deal with this new pollution has given us some direction.
These are beautiful celebrations of our cultural significance, of our perseverance, and offer great healing. We are celebrating these acts as they empower our cultural preservation efforts and make this energy alive through our valuable participation.
What do you think of when you hear “environmental justice?”
I think of the injustices that take place so unapologetically throughout this country and around the world. I’ve been exposed to and stand up for our homelands by my family’s participation and modeling. Participating in the protection of our rites and rights is our responsibility. Standing up and speaking on behalf of our water, air, land, access, sacredness, places, and ancestral practices is a duty we hold onto wholeheartedly. Taking a stand against development, destruction, contamination, pollution, greed, and other acts of devalue require our attention.
If my great grandma didn’t fight for our shellfish rights, today we would not be able to harvest from our beach. If my grandma didn’t take a stand to protect the Tolowa (Smith) River from nickel mining, we would not have a clean river in California. If my grandmother didn’t take a stand for the last three percent of our old-growth redwoods, as a part of the Redwood League, we would not have any old-growth redwoods today. If we didn’t take a stand against the City of Trinidad for the protection of Tsurai Village site, it would’ve been desecrated by the proposed development atop of the cemetery of Yurok people today. If we all didn’t come together to protect the Klamath River to remove the dams, they would not be in the process of removal today.
Attending rallies and speaking for the protection of Oregon in the Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) pipeline project development was a huge win for us. It took all of us uniting and taking a stand. If the LNG project wasn’t stopped, it would’ve been the biggest source of pollution for the State of Oregon. Private landowners, farmers and Indigenous communities all came together in this effort and these communities are often on the opposite sides in water concerns. Yet today, we still battle the lily bulb field millionaires on the Tolowa River in Smith River, CA in an effort to stop the unregulated poison dumped in our river annually.
Finding justice in our world today is few and far between. We have great work to do in reaching justice. We have a great calling in meeting these needs. I will always side on sacredness and Mother Earth is worth every act of protection. Upholding our sacred relationship with Nvnnvsta~ is our duty, it is our way of living that we are endorsing.
How does preserving your Peoples’ culture connect with your understanding of environmental justice?
Preserving my ancestral practices through living with this approach at the forefront of all my work is necessary and even more vital today. Understanding our roles and using our hearts and minds is necessary. Sacredness is a way we must look at this world. A sacred lens is often excluded in our approaches. The energy of sacredness exudes connection. Holding a place, an element, an act in a sacred manner changes the way we see and treat things, people, and places.
Sacredness is our original and innate energy. This energy comes through in the way we talk, see, and move. Our ceremonial offerings give us deliberate space and worth of these very ancient practices. Our spiritual aspects are not to be ignored or taken for granted. We must use our purposeful approaches to hold space for such important acts. Checking in with our spirit, analyzing our interests, understanding our fears and hopes is necessary in meeting these needs. We must reconnect, decolonize and perform our sacredness in every act.