Completed during the summer of 2022, this project bringing together international artists including Desi Mundo, Pancho Pescador, Steven Smith, Brandon Gabriel and Jonas Bige is a large-scale mural depicting multiple layers of storytelling.

First, and in the main layer is the vision of Chief Seattle from the 1800’s. He prophesied a future where Indigenous ways had been entirely destroyed by colonization; this future bore the results of all peoples in despair and poverty, the corruption of the colonial government, and the environmental degradation caused by industrial overuse and over-extraction. His vision was one of infrastructure crumbling. His promise was for the Coast Salish peoples to retake our lifeways and fill the flooding sea with our canoes. This basis envelops the mural.

Depictions of Thunderbird are included, as Thunderbird’s return would herald the rebuilding of longhouses—something taught to our peoples in the beginning by this world-creating life-giving sacred winged one. The remnants of the cityscape is visible beneath the overtaking ocean: the Space Needle’s ruin visible above the water with the canoes passing by.

Another layer of storytelling includes two women present on the canoe in the foreground. These women are Tsimshian and represent a historical resistance of matriarchs to colonial occupation by the military in Alaska. The men had gone to war, and the women at home in their village saw American ships off the coast, the military’s intention to take over resources in the area for war production. Protecting the forests from deforestation and the earth from mining, a Matriarchal leader in the community organized the women to peacefully blockade the military presence. This collective of Tsimshian women, dressed in regalia, filled their canoes and then surrounded the American ships offshore. Entirely unarmed, they defended their territory from the American military and those ships left. This story follows the lineage of one of the administrators leading the mural project, and her grandmother, depicted in the two women.