Swinomish photographer Matika Wilbur brings her journey to Shelter Bay

In a stirring and powerful presentation at the Shelter Bay clubhouse last Saturday, Matika Wilbur shared her vision and her ongoing quest “To Change the Way We See Native America” with over 80 people, primarily Shelter Bay residents and family friends. She has created Project 562, to “visit, engage and photograph all 562 plus Native American sovereign territories in the United States.”

While showing photographs of her five years of traveling the country, visiting tribes and reservations, she told a deeply personal story, integrating her biography, history, philosophy and values – and her commitment to work with and help Native people. Her project has become a calling. “If you have the courage to walk the Path, then everywhere you go people will help you,” she said. Wilbur is helping, too. She is moved to act by the conditions Native people live in, including the high number of suicides among the young.

“It became clear to me,” she said, “until we change the narrative, until we create a new narrative, this will continue to happen,” Wilbur is pursuing fundamental change. The 34-year-old Swinomish and Tulalip woman says the question to ask is “what does it mean to be human?” She says the need is to connect with the land, that our awareness must be land based. She shared her experience with a tribe on the Colorado River who call themselves the people of the green-blue water. Major damage to the ecosystem has transformed the land and the color of the water. How are they to identify themselves?

Wilbur discussed her six months stay at Standing Rock, North Dakota, where she filmed the fight to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline. The pipeline goes through sacred burial grounds as well as threatens the water supply.

Her concerns are as wide ranging as the tribes she has visited, from Hawaii to Massachusetts and Florida to Alaska. Wilbur brought up sexual assault and the need to create safety for women. Sixty percent of assaults are done by non-native people she said, but a legal loophole prevented prosecution. Congress has changed that law, finally.

Treaty rights include education, but that has meant going to white schools and assimilation. Wilbur is committed to Indian education that respects the culture and the economy of tribal people. For the Swinomish, that means ceremonies and fishing with parents and elders is part of their education, over being in the classroom. “Are we asking our kids to be Indian or something else?” she asked. She has seen that native-based education works.

The good humored, often funny, humanistic Wilbur finished as she started: reaching out. “We are a relationship based people. Our relationships are with the land, with the water, with one another. We have to build relationships with people different from one another. I extend that to you,” she said to the primarily European, older audience.

Wilbur had been invited by the Shelter Bay Homeowners Association’s board in the hopes of improving understanding and relationships between Shelter Bay residents and the Swinomish community. She succeeded on her end.

At the start, Wilbur’s mother, Nancy, provided a personal introduction to her daughter, recognizing several people in the audience that had supported Matika and sharing anecdotes, many related to her daughter’s path and development as a photographer. In the hall, a sampling of her photographs on easels were displayed, encircling the audience.