By Bill Reynolds
La Conner Community News
The newest chapter in Indigenous Peoples’ Day observances here unfolded at La Conner Swinomish Library last Wednesday.
Members of the Vendiola family, long associated with education and tribal heritage initiatives, led a two-hour Oct. 7 program at the local library that focused on bolstering cross-cultural relationships.
The presentation was the latest segment in the ongoing ‘Swinomish Speaks’ series, designed to further cultural ties on both sides of the channel.
“The question we always ask is what is the health of our relationship? We’re always trying to bring that question forward,” said daniseten Michael Vendiola, a former Washington state director of Native education now affiliated with the Bellingham-based Setting Sun Circle filmmaking and storytelling venture.
“Our hope, dream and goal,” he said of the Setting Sun Circle mission, “is to gather people together and share with one another.”
The La Conner Swinomish Library program was held midway between annual Sept. 30 Orange Shirt Day reflections on the traumatic Native residential school era and Indigenous Peoples’ Day on Oct. 12, the counterpoint to Columbus Day.
“We know the historical trauma is there,” Vendiola acknowledged, “but we’re trying to build community and relationships together.”
The Setting Sun Circle vision will be further enhanced, he said, with the opening next year of an innovative, multiuse cultural center in downtown Bellingham. Vendiola said the venue will be highlighted by several key features, including an immersive theater, a 50-foot LED video wall, Coast Salish gallery, healing garden, and a living mural with night projections.
Vendiola credited Lummi Nation leader Darrell Hillaire, the executive director of Setting Circle Sun, with taking a wide-ranging approach to storytelling and relationship-building.
“His idea is to make it contemporary,” said Vendiola, “with films, stage plays, novels, and podcasts.
“Other communities asked us to help tell their stories. That’s how we got into filmmaking.”
Vendiola shared an example of Setting Sun Circle’s work with his La Conner Swinomish Library audience — a powerful documentary outlining the collaboration between Lummi Nation elder and carver Sam Cagey Jr. and Lummi/Nooksack artist Jason LaClair on an intricate story pole project.
Cagey had stopped working on the pole when his wife passed away. He asked LaClair if he would consider finishing it for him. LaClair honored Cagey’s request, overcoming initial fears.
“I was scared at first,” LaClair says in the film. “I’m an artist, but I don’t carve. So, I was scared at first. But Sam trusted me, so I had to trust myself.”
The project proved a success, and LaClair was emboldened to pass on his knowledge of art and culture to area students.
“How better to get to know one another than by sharing our cultures,” he explained in the film.
Vendiola was joined at La Conner Swinomish Library by his brother, Richard Vendiola, who is on staff at the library, and their mother, Swinomish elder Diane Vendiola, a retired educator and conflict resolution consultant.
“I’m so grateful that I work at a library that honors Indigenous Peoples’ Day,” said Richard, who welcomed attendees in Lushootseed and English.
“We’re proud to be culturally connected with the Swinomish Tribe,” he stressed.
Bill Reynolds is a general assignment reporter at La Conner Community News.
