How do we live in the light of our new awareness and not the darkness of violent, remorseless colonialism? Here's one idea.

Monday was Indigenous Peoples Day, and it’s important that we make it more than an annual show of celebration and recognition. The potential power of a holiday like this is for it to be a yearly call to continued growth and lasting change.

One way to move in that direction now is to familiarize yourself with more Indigenous-led media, and with a few of the many brilliant Indigenous folks are out there right now boldly sharing their work, sharing their art, and sharing their experiences with the world. However you keep in touch with the world, use this week to be all the more intentional about it.

Another way to honor Indigenous Peoples Day as a time of reconciliation and growth is to come to a deeper understanding of and connection with the land you’re calling home. Whose loss made it possible for you to live where you live?

Native Land (nativeland.ca) makes it amazingly easy to uncover this information for yourself and your own specific situation. Using my address and an interactive map of the world, Native Land shows that I’m living on occupied Duwamish and Puget Sound Salish territory.

The site will also show you all the treaties signed concerning the land you live on, as well as the languages spoken. The 1855 Treaty of Point Elliott is evidently the most recent treaty regarding the land I call home in what today is called Seattle, and reading the treaty itself was powerful. It spells out in writing that the United States government forced the Indigenous people of this area to a small, confined area; that it offered pathetically small compensation for this eviction to a glorified concentration camp; and that it reserved the right to force them off even the reservation whenever the president should eventually see fit.

Awareness and acknowledgment are important first steps, but knowledge alone is not enough. We have to dig deeper. How do we integrate this new knowledge into our behavior and our daily lives? How do we use our awareness to live in a way that doesn’t perpetuate our violent past?

These are complicated questions, but we can’t let their complexity paralyze us into total inaction. One step in the right direction, I think, can be found here: Real Rent Duwamish (realrentduwamish.org).

Real Rent Duwamish allows you to set up a monthly “rent” payment to the Duwamish Tribe for the right to live on land in their unceded territory.

Why monthly?

“While one-time donations are essential to the upkeep of the Longhouse, paying monthly rent represents a continuing effort and desire to acknowledge the Duwamish while recognizing that we are visitors on their land who are profiting from being here. Monthly giving keeps the land's original inhabitants on the forefront of our thoughts. Through our monthly contribution and acknowledgement, we can be more deeply connected to this wonderful place.”

What’s the right rent for you?

“Just as everybody’s financial situation is unique, so is the amount of rent that will feel right for you. You may choose to give a percentage of your income or monthly rent or mortgage, or perhaps there is another number that holds symbolic significance for you. For example, paying $54 a month could serve as a powerful reminder of the 54,000 acres of homeland that the Duwamish Tribe signed over to settlers in 1855. In the end, any amount is the right rent as long as it’s meaningful to you! Or, click here to try out this donation calculator.”

This is made all the more important in the case of the Duwamish Tribe by the fact that the tribe is not officially recognized by the federal government. They would truly have been erased if not for the Duwamish people who continue today to fight to maintain their heritage and their identity. It feels like literally the least we can do to support that effort as we sit on their land, benefitting from its theft.

As of today, my family is paying $54 a month to the Duwamish Tribe for the foreseeable future. When we’re able to do more, we will.

Reflecting on love of family and love for our city as an urban juror in Seattle

I was called for jury duty this week. Municipal Court of Seattle.

In fact, as I type this, I’m sitting on the 12th floor of the downtown courthouse building awaiting juroral deployment… as I have been doing continuously since 8:30 this morning. It’s been a boring day so far, but it’s nice to have been bored in a warm, beautiful room, if nothing else, watching the sun creep toward the horizon over the Sound. This is my view currently:

I’ve had plenty of time alone with my thoughts today, and I’ve reached a conclusion: in writing this blog, in focusing on the inequities in Seattle’s schools and communities, I tend to live in a fairly negative head-space when it comes to thinking about my home, about the city where I’m raising my family.

For one thing, that’s not a good way to live. It’s exhausting. Literally depressing, in fact.

But it’s also not an accurate reflection of how I really feel about Seattle. Sure, it’s dark, it’s damp, it’s segregated, and it’s got its share of issues. But it’s also a place of rich beauty, both in terms of the extravagant natural beauty that sandwiches the city and of the interpersonal beauty within it.

I find it’s easy to take for granted the ways that our city and our state — and us, its people — are kicking ass.

We’ve been on the front lines in recent years when it comes to putting our legislation where our “liberal” mouth is. Gay marriage, charter schools and cannabis are all legal, and we’ve taken nation-leading stances against discriminatory laws targeting immigrants and LGBTQ folks.

It’s extremely common now to find gender-neutral bathrooms in Seattle, and a huge number of businesses, restaurants and coffee shops proudly display a commitment to providing safe spaces. This, in contrast, was a sign I encountered in a bathroom last fall in in Miles City, Montana:

We’ve done all kinds of courageous, radical things lately. Water protectors in the South Sound last year shut down a train attempting to transport supplies to Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) work sites. We felt the ripples at the time in Standing Rock, and it was powerful.

Seattle divested its public funds from Wells Fargo as a matter of principle a few months back. We are at the vanguard of the movement for fair wages. Activists across the city successfully halted government plans to build a new youth jail. We even had a glimmering moment earlier this year when it looked like we might elect Nikkita Oliver as our next mayor.

And let's not forget there's a baseball team here, which is important for morale — even if, let’s be honest, it’s the Mariners. No offense.

It’s strange how easy it can be to overlook these sorts of things when so much else seems to be crumbling around us. Along these same lines, I spend a lot more time focused on the negatives at Emerson Elementary, the neighborhood public school where we send our oldest son, than I do on the positives.

Now, I’d argue that this is a rightful imbalance, and that I’m not denigrating (I hope) the school or community as much as I am advocating for more resources and attention at an institution that has been long overlooked. But it still means I regularly spend hours looking at a computer screen through the opposite of rose-colored glasses as I write about my son’s school, his district and our home.

It’s weird.

Emerson is a beautiful place, too. My son walks every day into a cool old brick school building with a view of Lake Washington from the second-story library. The student body could hardly be more diverse, and we are lucky that the school is filled with similarly diverse, committed teachers and staff.

My son’s teacher is fantastic. She sees and values him as a whole person, and when she’s gone, he misses her. He’s learning, he’s comfortable, he’s happy and he’s safe. That’s most of what I could ever ask for out of a school right there. Well, no. But it’s most of what I currently ask for out of a public school, and that’s pretty good.

We’re getting close to that time of year when we start making resolutions, mapping out all the new ways we’re going to start living when the calendar flips. At the top of my list is to appreciate all of the good and beautiful things in my life, starting with the time and love I am so lucky to share with my kids and my partner, and with the beautiful home we share that helps make it possible. All things, it seems, stem from there. I hope, then, as I write and advocate and live through the coming year, to remember that the strength and will to fight against these systems and tools of oppression comes from a place of love.

I write so often about Emerson because I love my son. I write so often about Seattle because I love my family, and I love our city, and I know we can do and be even better.

I write about privilege because I love my life, and because the open doors and loving second chances I’ve been handed over and over should be for everyone.

I’m sure I’ll still spend next year shouting from the rooftops yet again, riled up about inequity and angry about systemic oppression and overt racism and latent bias and about the ways they infect our schools and our lives, and I’ll still be as committed as ever to holding us and our city to an unrelenting standard.

But I do it out of love.

So, that’s my resolution. I’ll keep breathing in the smog and the smoke and the greed and the politics and the racism and the classism and the division and the hate. I’ll breathe it in, filter it out, and exhale it back into the world as love, whatever form that takes.