Lummi Artists on Lummi Island

Art is a powerful way to bring people together. The Lummi Island Artist Studio Tour has taken place on Labor Day weekend every year for the past several years. This year, the Lummi Island Heritage Trust is hosting Lummi artists at the Otto Preserve, so that islanders and visitors to the island can enjoy Lummi traditional and contemporary arts and crafts alongside island-based arts.
The Lummi artists include Floyd Warbus, Saalmathlat Ethel Hillaire-Warbus, Jason LaClair, Rosalee Qweleesia Revey-Jacobs, Aletha Ballew, Creative Cuzzin and Eliza Julius. Swil Kanim will share music in the afternoon. Some Island artists/musicians will also be part of the event.
While Lummi artists may now live on the mainland, Lummi Island is part of traditional Lummi territory. It is home to ancestral village and ceremonial sites, as well as hunting and foraging grounds. Reefnet fishing is an ancestral Lhaq’temish (Lummi) technology that is still practiced — primarily by non-tribal fishermen — at Legoe Bay on Lummi Island.
Since the relocation of the Lhaq’temish people from the islands to the mainland, Lummi Island has been home to mostly non-Native people. Although the ferry to Lummi Island docks at Gooseberry Point in Lummi Nation, the island and the Nation sometimes seem worlds apart. Art is a way to start to bring Lummi back to the island, and the island back to Lummi.
The Lummi Island Heritage Trust (LIHT) has a new Executive Director, Susan Hutton. She and the board of LIHT are committed to the conservation of lands and nature on the island, and also to building community. Increasingly, there is awareness that not only is the Island traditional Lhaq’temish (Lummi) territory, but also that Lhaq’temish history and present-day community, culture, spirituality, knowledge and leadership are vital to the health and future of this place we now all call home. The LIHT is pleased to sponsor this event, and to host both Lummi and non-tribal artists at the Otto Preserve this year.
While the island-wide artist tour will run all weekend, this event is Saturday, September 3, 11am-6pm, with music from 3pm-6pm. Otto Preserve. 3560 Sunrise Road on Lummi Island.