Currents Cohort

Suquamish Tribe

I am the Traditional Food and Medicine Program Coordinator for Suquamish. I teach how to gather, prepare and process foods and medicine for my community. I was elected to Suquamish Tribal Council in March 2024. The work I do with gathering our foods and medicines is integral to my job and who I am as a person. Every year I assist with our Tribal school Ocean to Table curriculum where we teach the students to catch, process, smoke and can salmon. I am also involved with Indigenous Aquaculture Organization through Sea Grant.

Swinomish

Daniel R. Smith is an artist, curator, and creative director based in Seattle. A Northwest Native enrolled in the Swinomish Tribe, he grew up on the Tulalip Indian Reservation before graduating from the University of Washington with degrees in fine art and graphic design. As a fine artist, he’s exhibited at the Center on Contemporary Art, Gallery 4Culture, Bumbershoot, Bellevue Art Museum, Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, Fresh Mochi, and SOIL gallery. His work can be found in the permanent collections of Seattle City Light, Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, MoPop, SF MoMA, Emory University, Yale University, and University of Washington. He was recently awarded Seattle Art Book Fair’s Page Turner Fellowship to produce a limited edition book of his collage work. Deeply involved in the local design community, he spent a decade organizing poster exhibitions connecting Seattle with cities politically at odds with the U.S., specifically Havana, Tehran, Moscow, and Istanbul.

Find him on instagram at @thenanoforest

Lummi and S'Klallam Nations

Chenoa Egawa is Lummi and S’Klallam of Washington State. Her Lummi and S’Klallam grandparents were multilingual, speaking Lummi, S’Klallam, several Coast Salish languages of neighboring tribes, and English. They were carriers of the profound ways of life of the First Peoples – as caretakers of our Mother Earth – through their interrelationship with their homelands and waterways; through their stories, songs, prayers and ways of life.

Chenoa is dedicated to upholding and amplifying the wisdom of her elders and ancestors, sharing teachings about our interconnectedness, our responsibilities to this sacred life, to one another and to the Natural world. She is a ceremonial leader, medicine carrier, singer, speaker, published author (The Whale Child and Tani’s Search for the Heart), artist and nature photographer. She is also a Senior Level Qigong Instructor through the Ling Gui International Healing Qigong School.

Snoqualmie Tribe

I am a Two Spirit artist, an author, and enrolled member of the sduk"albix™/Snoqulamie Nation located in Snoqualmie, Washington. My published work and artworks include Prayer of Silence with Island Ink, sales with Salish Lodge and private collections.
I am a highly regarded visual artist who has received public and private commissions and had work widely displayed in galleries and museums, both in the United States and Canada. Addition-ally, l've led visual arts workshops with schools and is an active contributor in tribal community on various committees.
My work focuses on representing those with disabilities, indigenous, queer and two spirit groups within my writing and artwork. You can follow me on instagram @mistletoetrex

Children of Setting Sun, Lummi Nation

I’m learning how to carry my People with me, how to stay grounded when I’m far from home, how to speak truth even when it makes folks uncomfortable.

Today, I carry all of it—my people, my past, my stubborn heart—into Indigenous-led storytelling, film, and community building. We don’t wait for approval. We build what we need. We speak, sing, and fight for the future our ancestors dreamed.

Makah

Ash is a multidisciplinary artist based in Seattle, WA. Their work explores the body as an extension of land through video and installation. Their work weaves identity, queer temporality, and Indigenous presence into forms that remain in motion.

Find them on instagram @ash.frantz

Muckleshoot

Valerie Segrest is an Indigenous food systems practitioner, nutrition educator, and writer whose work is rooted in Indigenous knowledge, food sovereignty, and place-based approaches to health.

Her and her daugher, Mazzy, are members of the Muckleshoot Tribe. Valerie’s life’s work is deeply informed by the lands, waters, and foodways of the Salish Sea region.

Segrest’s work emerges from long-standing relationships with community, elders, educators, and land. Rather than treating food as an isolated intervention, she approaches nourishment as a living system — shaped by ecology, culture, history, and responsibility. Her practice is guided by an ethic of care: doing work thoroughly, thoughtfully, and in ways that honor the time it takes to build trust and get things right.

Find more of Valerie’s work at https://www.valeriesegrest.com/

Jamestown S'klallam

Lu is a citizen of the Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe with roots in the Nooksack Tribe through her grandmother, Jean Cooper. She runs her own business creating traditional and traditional-adjacent regalia, jewelry, and accessories, and works to make traditional materials accessible by harvesting and trading cedar bark, nettle, salmon leather, sweetgrass, shell, and more — practicing her treaty rights through every gather.

Lu serves on the Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe Cultural Committee and has worked with the Tribe's Traditional Foods and Culture program, supporting Canoe Journey, salmon ceremony, and community cultural workshops. Her art and her activism are inseparable: salmon motifs thread through her jewelry and weavings, salmon leather and bone appear in her baskets and skirts, and the health of salmon habitat anchors everything she cares about. As she puts it — there isn't a part of her work as a weaver or gatherer that salmon hasn't touched.