The Chief Seattle Club, CSC, has long since tended to and nurtured the seeds for growth, sowing opportunities, and holding space for healing. It is an important center we need for our Indigenous communities to survive and hopefully thrive in this urban Coast Salish territory of Seattle Washington. For me CSC has always stood as a place our Indigenous Urban community can find resources, give support, and or/ just be, no façade or mask necessary. This is CSC’s foundation, a place for us Urban Indians to connect or reconnect in an otherwise isolating urban setting. My own memories here at CSC go back decades, sitting in talking circles, filming, and learning from amazing indigenous teachers. Here at CSC, I feel accepted and safe as an indigenous woman. It is with these memories and feelings that I first step into the CSC’s newest endeavor, the ?a’l ?a’l café.
My first impression comes from the music, songs sung by Native singers. The first sights to greet me are beautiful works of art, inspired and created by Native American artist. Among the artwork surrounding me, there are pieces done by one of my favorite artists, Charles Fiddler, from the Chippewa Nation. Charles is also depicted in the mural decorating the café’s wall. It warms my heart to be surrounded by images created by and from our native artist. I am immediately welcomed by a beautiful young woman who shares a similar brown skin tone, much like my own. The smells make my mouth water. I am surrounded by delicious food and amazing coffee choices. The menu is full of comfort foods like rabbit stew and blue corn mush along with the awe-inspiring flavors such as those found in the bison tacos. With every step into this café, I feel welcomed, it feels like coming home, I feel like I have found a place I can belong.
The name ?a’l ?a’l comes from a Coast Salish Language called Lushootseed, ?a’l ?a’l, and it means home in the Lushootseed language, a fitting name. From the first step into the café to the moment you leave it is like sitting down in a favorite relative’s home. This is what it feels like here at the ?a’l ?a’l café. It feels fitting that my first interview here is with a longtime family friend. Let me introduce you to James Lovell, a member of the Chippewa Nation, he is Chief Seattle Club’s Development Director. James is responsible for overseeing fund raising, grant writing, communications, policy, advocacy development efforts at the Chief Seattle Club and older brother to the artist Charles Fiddler. Whenever I see James, he is running from one place to another, but as busy as he is, James will always find time for a conversation, an encouraging word, and making sure everyone has what they need. James had this to say about why places like CSC and more specifically the ?a’l ?a’l café are needed for our indigenous communities living in urban settings.
“There is a real sadness we have as Native people, being an Urban Native person can be a very lonely place. That is why we at CSC do everything with as many cultural pieces as possible here. There is a reason we (Urban Native’s) don’t do as well in other people’s housing environments. If you take 100 people living in King County likely only 1 person out of those 100 will stand up as Native, that’s 1 percent of the urban population. If you take 100 people who are chronically homeless in King County, approximately 32 of those 100 people will stand up as Native. There is a 32 percent disproportionality, we are nearly 1/3 of the homeless population here even though we make up only 1% of the population. In a lot of ways, we end up as a joke. We exist as the mascot for a sports team, you are the target in a western, or a Halloween costume.” James Lovell, Chief Seattle Club’s Development Director. Explains, that is how we have been allowed to exist in Westernized societies.
It is the motivation behind the hard work born from the Chief Seattle Club’s good intentions. This has become the soil laid down for growth and continued sustainability for our Indigenous Urban populations. This is what has produced real change for our Indigenous Urban communities who came here through the many broken promises that lured or pushed indigenous peoples into urban communities. CSC’s good intentions towards our communities are the seeds sprouting with long term sustainable housing projects like the PHS program and the ?a’l ?a’l café. The sprouts have blossomed beautifully, giving roots to our Urban indigenous community members in need of assistance or a little bit of belonging. “The ?a’l ?a’l café gives us a way to share our stories and for native and non-native café patrons to learn about what is happening here at CSC. “It gives us a practical place to meet with funders, providing a less invasive window to share what we do and who we are with non-native funders; while also providing a place for our community, with our art, our music, and our indigenous foods.” James Lovell, Chippewa Nation, Chief Seattle Club’s Development Director.
My next interview is with Alvin James from the Tlingit Tribe, ?a’l ?a’l Café’s Supervisor. Al was born and raised in Alaska surrounded by his Nation and their traditional foods. Al has a wealth of knowledge, having studied business and being extremely valuable because of his knowledge of traditional foods too. Al has also already set up and run a successful coffee shop for a coffee giant here in Seattle. These are just some of the reasons the café sought to entice Al away from the well-known coffee chain. Not only does he have the experience necessary in building and running a successful coffee house, but he also grew up with the importance of eating and providing traditional foods for indigenous communities. He really understands the importance of keeping our food and their environments pollution free, productive, sustainable, and safe. Al said he was excited to be given the opportunity to bring traditional foods to the forefront in our bid for real change. He was eager to become involved in every part of the café from setting it up, to hiring, to creating the space that would welcome our Urban Native community and educate the non-native community too.
As an Urban Native who has worked in predominately non-native settings Al, and I connect on the mask we have to wear outside of safe spaces like the ?a’l ?a’l café. It is a daily struggle to always feel the pressure of having to make everyone else feel comfortable with your existence or to even prove your existence as a Native American in a world where we are often forgotten as a “thing that happened” in America’s history our current depiction limited by a very narrow colonized narrative. “In a world where we have to wear a mask to make the general population feel safe, it is hard to feel acceptance or feel we belong, much less that we are welcomed into non-native settings.” Al James, ?a’l ?a’l Café Supervisor.
Al refers to the fact that this Café is a small part of the bigger picture. For the first time since he left Alaska Al had this to say “I absolutely love coming to work now. I come here as myself and I welcome everyone who comes here as their true selves too. There is a freedom to knowing you belong, here, you can feel and see the beauty that is us.” The ?a’l ?a’l Café is a beautiful branch of the Chief Seattle Club’s amazing spirit. It is a place indigenous communities can come to find traditional foods made with care filled with love, to nurture us, to remind us, even to connect us mind, body, and soul. It is also a place for non-Natives to meet the real, current us, here we can remind the world we are still here. It is one of the few places we can present all of us, Indigenous peoples very much alive, in all our beautiful and varying forms. It is also a chance for non-natives to experience our spirit, the love we naturally add into the food, the music, and the art. The ?a’l ?a’l Cafe is where you can come to see the very vibrant and diverse communities we so proudly represent.
My next interview is with Vanessa Gloria, from the Lower Elwa, Tlingit, Duwamish, Snoqualmie, and Aleut tribes. Vanessa had felt burnt out and used up during and after her experience, especially during covid, working in veterinary clinics. Although she was successful working in the westernized workplace, she just knew it wasn’t where she belonged. Vanessa was not sure what she wanted to do; she just knew she wanted to work with her community but wasn’t sure how. So, one day she went to Indeed and typed in Native Jobs. The first thing to appear was CSC’s job listing for the ?a’l ?a’l café. Vanessa had this to say about her first time coming to the ?a’l ?a’l café. “Walking in the café doors the first time was astonishing. It felt surreal. My boss is Native, my co-workers are Native, most of the people in and around the café are Native. When you first walk in there is a beautiful mural. Here we get to share our stories. We all started here together; it created a bond between us. It is the first time, I knew I wanted to be here, working with Natives for Native peoples. It is a good feeling to have.” Vanessa shares how people were brought in to teach them about the products, “it is important to know where everything comes from to understand where and how to share it. This is how we are taught.” From the first time Vanessa entered the café and every day since she shared, “I have always said that the ?a’l ?a’l café has a spirit, and it brings in whoever needs to be here. This spirit brings in the people, the medicines, the foods.” It is a spirit I feel too, I am comforted by and recognize the love this spirit offers to even an infrequent visitor like me.
My last interview was with Leah Sainz-Jones, from the Mescalero Apache Nation, Leah is the Café’s newest member. She is also the first beautiful smile that greeted me when I walked in. Before coming to work at the ?a’l ?a’l café Leah had been stuck in a very off-putting environment where she was only one of three people with brown skin. Undervalued, provided no opportunities for growth and with no real connection to her workplace, Leah started looking for a place that would value her creative spirit and allow her to shine in her own unique way. Leah really wanted to work in a place she could feel fulfilled and work with other indigenous people. Her interview was the first day she stepped into the café. “I was struck by the feeling that this is the most native relatives I have been around in a very long time. Traditional music was playing, and I was surrounded by Native art created by Native artist in that first moment all my nerves just went away.” For Leah it was not an interview, but instead she had found the place she belonged. Leah is an actress, singer, and performer who has always loved to create foods that nourish and encourage the people. In regard to the food Leah says, “When we use and consume our traditional foods we feel it in our bones, in our skin, our DNA recognizes and responds to the foods we eat. You nourish yourself when you feed your community from a place of love and care.”
The common thread throughout the interviews and when talking to the people is belonging. Woven through each story was the desire to work with and for our indigenous communities. So many of our Urban Native communities are affected and born from our shared traumas, relocation, forced adoptions, forced sterilizations, boarding schools, broken government promises and so much more. Where we come from is tainted by the uprooting of our families, and the brutal destruction of our culture, language, and our communal ways. These traumas have been and are still obstacles we face in some way and on varying degrees as indigenous people. These and so many other traumas born from our history here lay as obstacles keeping us from our true selves, our languages, and our traditions. The spirit felt in this small café is powerful. The spirit found her welcomes us, nurturing us, before setting us all on our singular and our collective healing paths. I am reminded of a John Trudell quote where he speaks about the colonizers genocidal practices meant for the destruction of our indigenous mind(s). John Trudell said “In order for that world to work, (the colonizers world), they have to mine our minds, to get at the essence of our spirit. The mining of the essence, the mining of the spirit. Mining our minds, the pollution from that is all the neurotic, distorted, insecure behavior patterns that we have developed, that’s the pollution. But it is a disease, it lives and travels through the mind, through the generations.”
Once they have access to the essence of our spirit, they can implant, replace, and destroy everything that we know to be important. Leaving behind a hole, a painful emptiness some try to fill with drugs, adrenaline, self-harm, or the harming of each other. This paves the way to us ignoring what we should know, or to us feeling powerless, in turn stealing away our innate knowledge. In these states of mind we ignore, forget, or fall away from our original instruction, taking us away from our very important roles and responsibilities. This dangerous mining of our minds opens up and allows for the destruction of our one and only Mother Earth. In this way they mine our minds, the same as they mine Mother Earth. It is easy to misguide a population of mined minds. Every one of us is searching for the place we can belong, the place we can be needed, we all desire to be wanted, to be accepted, every person at one point or another wants for someone or something to be considered necessary/ we all want to feel wanted, our lives worthwhile. That is the place that was stolen from us. It is in the emptiness left behind where we become blind to the rape and desecration fossil fuel giants, banking institutions, and insurance companies inflict on our Mother Earth on a daily basis. It is their pandering to our desire for something in our lives to be easy that distracts us from our responsibilities. They want us to become comfortable in the emptiness, so they use our desperation and our disconnect to build their power. They then use their wealth and power over our minds to destroy our earth in the name of fulfilling our selfish short-term desires. In this way they steal our future, by destroying us from the inside out.
You could ask, ‘what does healing our communities, or a little café have to do with combating climate crisis? How is this relevant? How does serving traditional foods help save or end the current climate crisis?’ If you ask this, then your thinking has been colonized, your mind has been mined. We often speak of decolonizing the mind, but most only see it or learn “decolonization” from westernized educational standpoints which in my view only reorganizes the imprisonment of your thought process and exchanges one cage meant to imprison the mind to another slightly better cage, decorated with the illusion of freedom, built on the self’s fragile ego. People trapped in their own colonized mind understand the need to believe in something or someone because we forgot how to believe in ourselves, our original instruction, our roles, and the necessity of our responsibilities.
Healthy communities are communities where everyone is respected and necessary (everyone is a part of the whole). We work together for the greater good, to pass on a future filled with possibilities. Rebuilding these healthy indigenous communities means making healthier, long-term decisions for a collective good. A place to feel accepted, or even wanted is a rare gift. With acceptance comes belonging. With belonging comes your role in the place you can belong too. With belonging comes responsibility for something beyond yourself. Belonging, our original instructions to care for the earth in the place you belong according to the roles and responsibilities you contribute to your community is a gift not everyone has anymore. The open arm approach embraced by the Chief Seattle Club and their staff is extended to everyone through the ?a’l ?a’l Café. A person who learns love and acceptance through their kindness will also learn the responsibility of their actions, that is a recipe for healing.
Traditional foods are a simpler argument to reach colonized minds. Indigenous foods are seasonal and indigenous teachings on hunting, foraging, and harvesting respect the environment and habitats where our foods are harvested and hunted. This cuts down on damage to the eco-systems, this means less fossil fuels used in transportation, little to no preservatives used in the storage of indigenous foods. There are no harsh chemicals, overharvesting, or unnatural destruction of our precious earth when collecting or cooking indigenous minded foods. That is one of many reasons why traditional foods are important in the fight against the current climate crisis for all people. Learn from the indigenous people where you stand how to hunt, learn how to harvest and when, remember how to take while always remembering how to give back. Do this every time so the food you eat does not negatively impact the environments you live within.
An indigenous chef infuses every dish with love, comfort, and a prayer for the people they feed. Those good intentions are felt in every bite of blue corn mush, rabbit stew, bison tacos, and in every sip of cedar tea. Nourishing every writer, activist, every Native, and non-Native. Being in that environment encourages everyone who passes through their doors to do and be better. I feel inspired to teach, to listen and share the stories that are important to me here. Each encounter, each bite, and every sip help to heal, allowing for all of us to learn how to give back in the way we were always meant to give back. The ?a’l ?a’l café may be just one branch, one part of the Chief Seattle Club’s story, but the lesson, love, and the café’s spirit is a very profound place where we can begin, belong, and blossom. Maybe someday, you’ll see me there writing a prayer for a future we can all share. I hope to see you here someday soon and maybe you will share a cup of tea or coffee and talk about our future here on our shared and beloved Mother Earth.
Rae Rose is a Pacific Northwest author of Paiute, Mayan, and Japanese heritage. She writes historical fiction, poetry, picture books. “Stories are very important to me, I hope you enjoy these stories I share with you.” You can follow her @Rae_Rose7. Her latest short story to be featured in, ‘The Haunted States of America’