If “every river has its people,” can The People restore their river?
Thanks to Ed M.
Davus Burge in Post Alley
Of Native Americans and their world on Puget Sound, here ar the words of John, a Swinomish elder born in the 1880s, who said: “Every river has its people.” In our tradition, a corollary would be, “Every city has its river.” Think of Rome, Paris, London, New York, and…Tukwila. Seattle also has the Duwamish river, but few in Seattle have ever seen it.
If you travel I-5 down to Sea-Tac, the river is just visible (don’t blink). In that split-second the ditch beneath the low overpass is easily missed. From the West Seattle freeway bridge, the East and West Duwamish waterways that cut through its delta are extensions of Elliott Bay. If you ferry across Elliott Bay and look south: the river’s once bucolic mouth is hidden by a forest of cargo cranes.
Either way, it is disappointing to learn that the storied Duwamish is now only 12 miles long and a toxic superfund site. Ride the tide up the waterways to where a weedy slough in Tukwila stagnates on the east bank, and it becomes Green River.
In Lushootseed, the native language spoken here, the river is dxwdǝwɁ, home of the dxwdǝwɁabš, the Duwamish people. If you can’t pronounce these, and few can, English letters and combinations approximate native pronunciation. I write dxwdǝwɁ as DKHW duw, the whispered prefix DKHW, “place, where,” capitalized because it is stressed. And duw, “inside,” voiced in a high tone, names the river. (continued)