All Environmental Justice Events

In July 2021, the House of Tears Carvers of the Lummi Nation transported a 25-foot totem pole from Washington State to Washington DC, stopping at sacred and historic places under threat from dams, climate change, and resource extraction. As the pole traveled, it drew lines of connection — honoring, uniting and empowering communities working to protect sacred places. It carried the spirit of the lands it visited and the power and prayers of communities along the way — ultimately delivering these prayers, power and demands to the Biden-Harris Administration and Congress in Washington DC, and culminating in an exhibition at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian.

More information: http://redroadtodc.org

This video profiles the activist science of the Watershed Institute, produced in the context of the 2018 exhibition Kwel’ Hoy: Many Struggles, One Front.

Developed by The Natural History Museum with the House of Tears Carvers of the Lummi Nation, Ramapough Lenape Nation, Watershed Institute, Princeton Environmental Institute and Center for the Humanities at CUNY Graduate Center, the exhibition connected the Watershed Institute’s efforts to protect the local watershed from the proposed PennEast Pipeline to the nearby Ramapough Lenape Nation’s struggle to stop the Pilgrim Pipeline, and the Lummi’s struggles to protect the waters of the Pacific Northwest from oil tankers and pipelines.

More information: https://thenaturalhistorymuseum.org/events/kwel-hoy-many-struggles-one-front/

For more than a decade, the House of Tears Carvers and members of the Lummi Nation have traveled across North America with totem poles to raise awareness about threats to the environment and public health. As the poles travel, they draw a line between dispersed but connected concerns, and help to build an unprecedented alliance of tribal and non-tribal communities as they stand together to advocate for a sustainable relationship between humanity and the natural world.

Kwel Hoy’: We Draw the Line was a cross-country tour, traveling museum exhibition, and series of public programs uplifting Indigenous leadership in struggles to protect water, land, and our collective future. With this journey, the totem pole entered a museum for the first time. Charged with the stories of resilience they have picked up on their journey across the country, the pole connected the museum—and the museum public—to the living universe in which they are enmeshed.

More information here: thenaturalhistorymuseum.org/events/kwel-hoy-we-draw-the-line/

“I am someone who, like many of us, is in the process of making history. My people knew that our great grandchildren would talk about the day that their grandparents went and stood in front of the pipeline that never became. And that is the story I want told in museums.”

Winona LaDuke is an internationally renowned activist working on issues of sustainable development renewable energy and food systems. She lives and works on the White Earth reservation in northern Minnesota, and is a two-time vice presidential candidate with Ralph Nader for the Green Party.

As Program Director of the Honor the Earth, she works nationally and internationally on the issues of climate change, renewable energy, and environmental justice with Indigenous communities. And in her own community, she is the founder of the White Earth Land Recovery Project, one of the largest reservation based non-profit organizations in the country and a leader in the issues of culturally based sustainable development strategies, renewable energy, and food systems. In this work, she also continues national and international work to protect Indigenous plants and heritage foods from patenting and genetic engineering.

In this video, Master Carver Jewell James (Lummi) presents the House of Tears Carvers’ Totem Pole Journeys as a response to the challenges we face in our struggles for a just and liveable planet for all.

The Lummi Nation’s House of Tears carvers has created a tradition of carving and delivering totem poles to areas struck by disaster or otherwise in need of hope and healing. In 2013 the House of Tears Carvers began a yearly totem pole journey highlighting the impacts of fossil fuels across tribal lands throughout North America. These journeys raise awareness and strengthen and expand cooperation between tribes, intertribal organizations, faith-based communities, environmentalists and community leaders who oppose fossil fuel expansion projects.