The Brandt Island Chief and a Hok'wat

Eleven months after the armed takeover of Wounded Knee, South Dakota in 1973 by AIM (the American Indian Movement) to protest the goverment’s failure to fullfill treaties with its Native American people, Washington State Federal Judge George Boldt handed down an historic decision favoring Treaty Fishing Rights.

As a result old prejudices were quickly rekindled as many outraged non-Indiginous lifelong commercial fishermen lost their commercial fishing licenses, their boats, careers and ultimately their way of life.

Other headlines at the time included President Nixon’s resignation, the Arab Oil Embargo, the kidnapping of millionaire heriess Patti Hurst and the end of U.S. military involvement in Viet Nam.

It was during this period of time in the Puget Sound region of Washington State that a no-nonsense Lummi Indian fisherman happened to notice both a surfboard and kayak setting atop an old make-shift motorhome parked on waterfront property belonging to the tribe. Paddling his dugout canoe closer to shore the older man asked one of his several sons to give the driver a message which he would quickly understand as not an option!

“My old man want to try out your kayak. He says you can use his canoe.”

A short time later while paddling alongside one another after the unexpected request, the trespasser is asked if he is capable of making a fiberglass repair on the tribe’s 50-year-old dugout canoe. Having made a few surfboards himself the Californian was anxious to help out, yet fearful of botching the job. The following day, however, he manages to fix the leak while surrounded by a 4th of July crowd of War Canoe competitors from at least two dozen American and Canadian west coast tribes.

That night the hard-bargaining Brandt Island Chief coerces an informal trade agreement with the traveler. “If you’re willing to teach the oldest of my seven sons how to do a major fiberglass repair on one of my fishing skiffs, you and your two dogs can park and live on our family land for as long as you damned well please.”

Once the Lawrence family was finally back into the business of commercial salmon fishing, the author quickly finds himself immersed in a non-stop journey including fist fights, abandoned cabins, alleged Sasquatch sightings, age-old sacred religious practices, Tribal Police accusations, and a threat to his life so convincing that to have run away would have forever marked him as little more than a long-forgotten coward.

Yet after an intiutive, yet seemingly improbable warning from one particular Lummi Indian woman: “Mark my words, one day you will have a half-Jewish / half-Indian baby of your own,” the author’s life was forever changed when he finally does fall in love.

Nonetheless, only by living without electricity and running water while spending on film instead, did both the author’s passion for photography and the faith of a few key tribal members in his attempt to capture relevant images lend any hope of his ever finding employment, let alone beginning a new career within the tribe itself.