YAI Oomagelees | Cynthia Wilson

Cynthia Wilson is a Lummi Language Speaker and a knowledge holder. She taught many kids in our community the language how to sing, dance and make give away items for ceremonies she was teaching us the way for future generations by listening to elders and carrying on the teachings. 

She taught us many things about our culture. I am thankful she did because I would have never known these valuable cultural traditions without her teachings.

We touch on the importance of Lummi Language but also hearing her fathers story about the residential boarding school in this episode. She has been a teacher in our community since I started elementary school even before that. Many of us are adults now have kids of our own even some of us have taken on the language who are teachers now as well she's been teaching us for a long time. She speaks the language and returns it back to our community she's breaking a cycle of trauma that has happen to our people due to residential boarding schools and her father being apart of that and being a fluent speaker and have it to be taken from your home she took the steps she needed she's doing the work for future generations, I find this very important because our language was almost lost except for a few elders speaking and preserving it. She has gifted the language to so many children and I can't imagine how thankful our ancestors are for her contributions to our community. Hy’shqe and thank you for all that you do for us in our Lummi community- our hands go up to you.

We want to bring light that her father was taken from his family as a child and placed in a residential boarding school the things he endured during that time and never spoke about in his life it was a scary time in Indian country for our young ones.

 Cynthia shares with us that they would take the older siblings because they wanted to take advantage of stripping their culture from them so they wouldn't teach the younger ones. She shares the story of how that happened how it affected her and her people.

I want to bring awareness to the 215 children that were found in Kamoloops British Columbia what a tragic of events. Our people told them about those graves sites the survivors of residential schools they hushed them and swept it under the rug after years and years light finally shed to the darkness. These things that happened need to be acknowledged because we didn't ask for it, it was forced on us the real discovery of America.