Indigenous youth and women shaping environmental futures

Luna Reyna Underscore Native News + ICT
After Santana Rabang began working with Children of the Setting Sun Productions as an 25-year-old, she felt a change inside herself.
'That's when I was really starting to find my voice as an Indigenous woman,' Rabang, Lummi, Nooksack and First Nations Shxwhá:y Village, told Underscore Native News + ICT. 'The place-based education really empowered me to start using my voice, and I was pretty outspoken during that time.'
Children of the Setting Sun Productions is an Indigenous-led nonprofit based in Bellingham, Washington that focuses on cultural education and environmental justice through film, podcasting and other forms of storytelling. Each of their major projects includes Indigenous youth, what they call their 'Young Tribal Leaders,' in some way.
Rabang began working with CSSP in 2021 through a connection at Northwest Indian College where she was a student. Shortly after starting as an assistant, it became clear that Rabang had more of an affinity and talent for production than administration. She has since worked on several episodes of the 'Young and Indigenous' podcast that has been produced by Native youth at CSSP since January 2020.
Rabang has also contributed to CSSP's Salmon People Project, which has three main components: gathering, documentary, and research. Rabang took a lead role on research, conducted with regional Native nations, including a series of audio interviews with those who identified as Salmon People. Researchers asked questions about their identity in connection to salmon, the history of fishing in their families and who they would be without salmon.
Through her role on these projects and her personal passions, Rabang, now 29, has been invited to speak about Indigenous rights and environmental justice at schools and cultural events revolving around dam removal, salmon restoration, tribal disenrollment, and even blood quantum.
Those experiences, and their themes, have shaped who she is today.
'Anytime that I'm able to speak on behalf of our people or speak on behalf of any injustices that we've endured as Indigenous peoples has really made me feel proud to walk in my own skin,' Rabang said.
While working on the Salmon People documentary film project, she formed relationships with many Indigenous women in leadership positions in environmental justice movements, which inspired a new series on the 'Young and Indigenous' podcast called Healing Women Heals Mother Earth.
'We have so many young tribal leaders here at CSSP, and I think that the 'Young and Indigenous' podcast has just been an outlet for us to continue that creative freedom that we have here,' Rabang said.
Healing Women Heals Mother Earth (HWHME) is a five-part podcast series that highlights women's leadership within grassroot movements, and how they take care of themselves while being involved in high-level advocacy work.
'It's important we talk about how self care is essential to being an advocate,' Rabang said in the December 20 introductory podcast to the HWHME series. 'While the movements we fight for are important, so is our mental health and well-being as women.'
Rabang describes herself as a daughter, an auntie, a student activist and a canoeing paddler during an episode in which she interviews Alyssa Macy, citizen of Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs and CEO of Washington Conservation Action.
Macy describes herself as an activist, a relative, an auntie, a sister and a caretaker of the planet. In leading policy, Washington Conservation Action works with communities to find solutions to address impacts of climate change. On the advocacy side, the organization holds elected officials accountable and helps to elect individuals believed to be allies on environmental issues.
The group also helps fund Native Vote Washington, a Native-led collaborative working to increase the political empowerment, education and engagement of Native Peoples in the political process in Washington state. Rabang traveled all over the state with Macy as a fellow for Native Vote this fall. During the podcast, Rabang and Macy reminisce fondly about organizing in local Native communities, even when staying in tents on the Makah Reservation in the pouring rain.
'That's when I feel most inspired, is when we're actually on the ground, doing the work, meeting people in person, talking to them, and just getting that elderly input, too, and that knowledge that they share with us is just so rewarding,' Rabang said.
During episode two of HWHME, Rabang interviews Vanessa Castle, Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe. Castle is the tribal engagement coordinator at Ridges to Riffles Indigenous Conservation Group, a nonprofit organization led by all women, representing Native American tribes in natural and cultural resource matters. A major focus right now is Klamath River restoration after the largest dam removal project in the world took place on that river. Castle also worked on the Yellow River Restoration, the former largest dam project in the world.
For Castle, the familial relationships that have been built throughout the collaborative work with CSSP have been wonderfully meaningful.
'During this process, we've seen an uprising of these strong Indigenous women who are supportive of one another, and it's been the most beautiful journey for all of us,' Castle shared on the podcast. 'And I know that we're building a family, right, from many different nations.'
The podcast is one facet of what CSSP is calling their Women's Initiative. The relationships built with women in leadership positions at CSSP through other projects have grown into mentorship relationships for the youth involved there. Inter-generational talking circles have been facilitated with women at the frontline of environmental justice and Indigenous sovereignty.
'It's really powerful stuff when you put all these women in a circle with one another, and you just allow them to just say what's on their heart, on their mind,' Rabang said. 'And a lot of it is [that] we can relate to one another… And so it's really just a support system as well.'
The podcast has been a way to further amplify these leaders' voices, and share the lessons of their path and the tools they've learned for self care with youth, and the general public, who may be on similar paths.
'The center of it is our health and wellness as women,' Rabang said.
The continued focus on Native women leaders can be seen on every CSSP project on and off camera, and in each of these projects, the CSSP team is connecting with other people, and those people are connecting with each other.
'In 2023, we hosted our annual salmon people gathering in Sacramento where we opened the gathering with a women's circle,' Santana shared. 'This circle [was] women who walk all different paths of life but came together with one common goal, giving a voice to salmon. During this gathering a lot of women were able to connect with one another, and not feel so alone in their work.'
Castle, who previously worked as the fisheries and wildlife technician for Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, met Amy Cordalis, who founded Ridges to Riffles, an Indigenous conservation group. Now, Castle works with Cordalis as the Ridges to Riffles tribal engagement coordinator.
The mentorship aspect of the women's initiative has also been powerful for everyone involved. For Castle, it has given her hope for the future.
'Maybe when my time here is done, this is your role,' Castle said to Rabang in episode two of the HWHME series. 'You'll have to take over, just like I'm trying to take over for the ones who have laid the path before us. Like all of our ancestors that came before us, that have fought to be where we're at right now … I think that was the most powerful.'
As matriarchs, life givers, caretakers, and knowledge keepers, Rabang said, Indigenous women's care for themselves can often come last. Taking a step back and having conversations about how to care for their own mental, spiritual and physical needs is key to those other roles.
'As women, we're also fighting to really break generational trauma and not carry that on to future generations, so it's important to take a step back and just figure out how we can cater to our mental, physical and spiritual well being, so that we're not carrying any of that pain or trauma or grief into any of the work that we're doing,' Rabang said.
She believes that HWHME speaks to Indigenous women's collective healing, which is tied to and impacts the health of Mother Earth.
'Our self growth becomes parallel with our environmental stewardship, because I believe that when we heal, we help heal those around us, and when we help heal those around us we're able to contribute more to the healing of Mother Earth, and we just become more aware of how our actions may harm Mother Earth and what we can do to really prevent those things from happening,' Rabang told Underscore + ICT.
The women chosen for the podcast series embody this idea, according to Rabang, and being able to have honest conversations with one another on the podcast for others to hear and learn from was important.
'When it comes to our health and well being as a woman, when we're able to talk about what has helped us within our healing journey, it allows other people to really not feel alone in their journey as well,' Rabang said.
This collective healing journey became all the more important when Rabang and others realized during their conversations that a lot of women leading many of these grassroots movements have felt alone in the work.
After Macy was diagnosed with cancer in 2022, she had to push past that feeling of being alone to ask for help.
'It would make me, like, want to crawl out of my skin to get on the phone and call people and say, 'Hey, I'm going to need some help,'' Macy told Rabang on the podcast.
So she asked people to send her 'snail mail,' and was pleasantly surprised to receive hundreds of letters and cards from people telling her 'how much they loved me.'
'I didn't know that I needed to hear that — you know, I didn't know that that was something that was missing for me — and so having that opportunity for people to just express what they thought about me, to tell me how much they loved me, or how much they appreciated me, was such a gift because I had been walking through a lot of my life thinking that I was by myself,' she said.
Macy said cancer also taught her that she needed to prioritize her spiritual health, that she can't fix everyone or their problems, and how to set boundaries.
'I know I can't fix everything, but what I know I can do is be in relationship with other folks, be inspired. Show up when people need me to show up and, importantly, live your life,' she said. 'I wish that I had an auntie at that time who would have said that to me and just said, 'Girl, go live your life. You deserve that. Go be who the Creator wanted you to be.''
On the podcast, Castle speaks passionately about her connection to land, water and salmon, recalling a fond memory of when Congress passed the Elwha River Ecosystem and Restoration Act in 1992.
'We were hugging and crying and high fiving and singing and dancing and breaking bread together,' Castle said. 'I remember that day and having prayers at the river and telling the fish it'll be okay, and just having that connection again.'
But it took several years for the dams to actually begin to be removed, and people started losing hope. When Castle started working for the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe's Natural Resources Department, she reminded people of their connection to the river and why the removal was so important.
'We need to feed ourselves, we need to feed our spirit, and that connection to the salmon is more than just food for us, right?' she said. 'And so I feel like … our ancestors sent me there to deliver a message, because some of those scientists had forgotten the reason the dams came out. Yes, it was for the salmon, but because our people fought for them.'
Both dams were finally removed over three years from 2011 to 2014, re-opening more than 70 miles of pristine salmon habitat and traditional fishing sites.
'Remember who you are and where you came from, and remember that you are of this land, that you are a part of this ecosystem,' Castle later told Rabang during the podcast. 'We are one of the keystone species in these ecosystems, and you're needed.'
'Often Western science removes humans from that, but us as Indigenous people, [we] are very necessary for all things in the ecosystem here,' she continued. 'So reminding yourself that you belong here, you are of this land, birthed out of this river, wherever it is, your creation stories, just lean back into that. You'll remember who you are.'
The care the women have for each other in the podcast, Macy said, will carry us all through the next four years of the new administration.
'Washington State is a place where I think dreams are going to be very possible in the next four years and we're going to have a lot of hard work to do,' Macy said. 'And I just wake up every morning pretty much defiant, and I'm like, I'm ready to fight. Whatever that looks like. I'm ready to do it.'
Macy hopes to keep dreaming of a better future and working toward that collectively with youth, learning and leading with love along the way.
'This is the time for us to lead with love,' Macy said. 'I know that we care deeply about our communities and about the future of our communities, and leading with love for me means taking care of myself, loving myself, loving the people around me.'
Santana echoed Macy's sentiments about the hard work of the next four years, responding, 'warrior up.' Her vision for her future has changed since meeting Macy, Castle and others through CSSP. Now, when she returns to college, she plans to pursue a multimedia career that would align with her work at CSSP and could take her further in the organization.
The rest of the five-part series will include Frances Charles, chairwoman of Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe; Kaylani Scott, executive director of the Columbia and Snake River Campaign; and Amy Cordalis, Molly Myers and Ashley Bowers of Ridges to Riffles, who led the Klamath dam removal and are now leading a lot of work with the restoration project.
'With all the things that have happened since the election there's a lot of grieving and shock, but the possibilities are still there, and here in Washington State I think we can do really great things,' Macy said. 'So young folks, young women, all people in our communities, just need to remember how much we love one another, love our families. That love is going to drive us to do incredible things going forward and I'll be here with all of you through that.'

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