About Idle No More Washington

We stand in solidarity with our First Nations brothers and sisters and allies for Treaty Rights, Water and Land Rights, and Environmental Protection of Mother Earth on the sacred land of our ancestors, decolonization and keeping our Native culture going strong! As our elders taught us…”What we do today is not for us, but for our children, and our children’s children.”

Idle No More Washington began in January 2013 when the growing Idle No More movement started in Canada on November 10, 2012. Since then Idle No More WA has organized over 150 nonviolent direct actions such as rallies, marches, teach-ins, workshops, call-in campaigns, online petition campaigns, Native youth creative tactics workshops, Town halls, action camps, presentations, flash mobs, and round dances. Idle No More Washington has collaborated with several local and regional organizations for environmental protection, educational justice, and sovereignty rights of Native Americans and First Nations. Decolonization is a vital part of Idle No More.

About Sweetwater

Sweetwater Nannauck, Director of Idle No More Washington

Traditional upbringing:

Sweetwater is Gishbuwada (Tsimshian Nation - Killer Whale clan), her father was Kaach.adi (Tlingit Nation - Raven/frog clan), and her grandfather was Seet’kweidi (Tlingit Nation - Glacier People clan). Sweetwater’s great-grandmother, Elizabeth Jackson, was a traditional medicine woman, and the precious granddaughter of the Naanya.aayi (Tlingit Nation – the Upper-living People clan) of the Stuk’heen Kwaan (Stikine River – Wrangell, AK). 

Sweetwater was raised by her Tlingit grandparents, Paul and Lottie Nannauck, who lived ‘the old way’ at Keex’Kwaan (Kake – The Town than Never Sleeps) a small village in Southeast Alaska. They had an arranged marriage, they only spoke Tlingit to each other at home, and her family ate mostly traditional food they gathered and prepared themselves. Her grandfather told her (and her siblings) stories every day after dinner, he taught her to be proud to be Tlingit and to never forget where she came from. Sweetwater’s grandmother took her to all the Native gatherings, meetings, conferences, and cultural events. This foundation provided Sweetwater with the traditional knowledge and inspiration for her life’s work in the Native community.

Traditional Teachers:

Sweetwater started cedar-bark weaving in 2001; her teachers were award-winning, traditional cedar-bark weavers, Mary Teri Kennedy (Tsimshian/Haida) and Lisa Telford (Haida/Tlingit).  Sweetwater learned how to do appliqué beading from Marty Kasko (Tlingit) who was an elder of the Killer Whale Dorsal Fin House from Klukwan, and regalia-making from elder Johanna Cabuag (Tlingit) of the Naanya.aayi clan. Sweetwater’s Tlingit language teacher was Florence Sheakley (Tlingit) Lukaax.adi clan (Raven/Sockeye clan) from Juneau. 

Teaching Culture:

Sweetwater is a traditional Tlingit and Haida dancer/singer, and traditional Tlingit storyteller.  She has shared her culture, history, and clan stories with Native and non-Native youth since 1999. She has been very involved in perpetuating and passing on the culture of her people by teaching at every Native youth organization in the Seattle and outlying areas, and to her nieces and nephews. She has taught cedar-bark weaving, beading, regalia making, story-telling, doll-making, and Beginning Tlingit language. 

Community Work:

Sweetwater has helped organize one of the most successful Native art shows in Seattle that started when she worked at American Friends Service Committee Indian Program. It is now an annual show today at Daybreak Star Cultural Center. She was on the Native Planning Committee for Folklife Festival and helped with organizing and locating Native representatives to participate in the first Folklife Festival ever to have a Native focus theme. She was the Administrative Assistant to glass artist Preston Singletary (Tlingit) for over three years and helped in the promotion of his art and music. Sweetwater was instrumental in organizing and promoting Preston’s shows including the exhibit at the Museum of Glass titled Preston Singletary: Echoes, Fire, and Shadows. 

Sweetwater was on the Indian Arts and Crafts Advisory Committee for American Friends Service Committee Indian Program that has worked on establishing a Washington State Indian Arts and Crafts program. She was an advocate for Native artists, dance groups, musicians, performers, and storytellers. She assisted several Native artists to obtain teaching jobs, performances, commissions, and funding in the urban community. She had been advocating for Native artists for over seven years, and through this work has brought awareness of the Native artists’ concerns to the larger community. Although no longer on the committee, as a result of all the years of community outreach and education today many organizations, colleges, museums, Native art shows, and galleries in Washington now comply with the federal Indian Arts and Crafts Act in the state of Washington.

She has participated in the annual Canoe Journey since 2002 and was instrumental in working to establish a non-profit organization for the Inter-tribal canoe society called the Canoe Nations Support Consortium. Other past boards and committees include the Board of Directors Western Coalition of Alaska Natives; the John T. Williams Organizing Committee; the Serious and Deadly Force Investigation Taskforce Committee; Seattle Art Museum and Museum of Glass Community Advisory Committee.

Sweetwater was on the Harborview Medical Center Cultural Care Plans Committee for the Inpatient Psychiatry which develops Interdisciplinary Standards of Care and Practices for patients of different ethnic backgrounds.  This group assists in providing Culturally Sensitive Care provides relevant cultural characteristics of these different ethnic groups and recommends interventions for the Interdisciplinary Team Members that work with psychiatric patients. She has assisted in updating and implementing a Cultural Care plan Standards of Care for Native American and Alaska Native patients that are sent to Harborview Medical Center.

Community Activist:

Sweetwater is an environmental activist partnering with several Native and non-Native organizations that advocate for the preservation of traditional sacred lands, protection of the fragile environment of the Northwest coast, and the traditional way of life of Native Americans. She has organized many Idle No More Washington events and nonviolent direct actions that address local and global issues. These actions include rallies, marches, call-in campaigns, online petitions, teach-ins, and blockades. She brought the Native community of Seattle together to successfully campaign to ‘Save the Murals’ that Andrew Morrison (Haida/Apache) made; ‘Save the Indian Heritage Program’ that Seattle Public Schools tried to eliminate; ‘Stand with the Nooksack 306’ for Nooksack tribal members that have been facing disenrollment from their tribe; helped coordinate a campaign to name the ‘Robert Eaglestaff School’ after a late, respected Native leader; and organized to ‘Save Baby Veronica’ who was being adopted out from her Cherokee father to non-Natives. She has lobbied in Washington, DC to protect the Arctic and the Tongass National Forest. She helped organize ‘Shell No’ actions in Seattle and in Anchorage when President Obama went up to Alaska for the GLACIER Conference.

November 10, 2024, is the 12th anniversary of Idle No More. Since then, Sweetwater has presented at over 200 events, helped organize light brigades, has given conference and college presentations, been a keynote speaker, given several different workshops, taught at activist action camps, helped organize town-hall meetings, and coordinated flash mobs and round dances. She helped organize ‘The Paddle to Standing Rock’ in September 2016. She was featured in the annual Seattle Weekly ‘Best of Seattle’ (2015) ‘Best Activism Idea’.

Sweetwater gives Idle No More workshops from a Native perspective that cover 500 years of indigenous resistance, healing historical trauma, and how non-Natives can work in a good way with Native activists. Some of her workshops include the History of Colonization, Healing from Historical Trauma, Spiritual Activism, Never Been Idle, The 7th Fire, Fragile No More, Decolonizing Health Care, and workshops for Native youth that include nonviolent direct action training, creative tactics, and how to write resolutions to submit to their organizations, and tribal councils.

Sweetwater was a founding member and co-chair of the John T. Williams Organizing Committee. She helped with coordinating and organizing several Native American marches, rallies, and actions in Seattle in response to John T. Williams, a First Nations carver that was killed by Seattle Police Officer Ian Birk on August 30, 2010. She assisted with meetings with the City of Seattle officials, Seattle Police Department, Washington State Senators and Representatives, the Department of Justice, and community groups to advocate for justice in the death of the late John T. Williams. She was on the Serious and Deadly Force Investigation Taskforce Committee. That committee was a result of reforming the Seattle Police Department from the investigation of the Department of Justice consent decree concerning the investigation of officer-involved shootings.

Spiritual Training:

Sweetwater was called to be a healer in December 1997, during which time she was bed-ridden with four slipped discs in her lower back when she finally accepted her calling. She has 25 years of extensive training and experience in traditional Native healing. She was taught how to do healing work from her ancestors and ‘Spirit’. From them, she inherited or learned how to do dream work, energy work, work with herbs, work with the weather, and how spiritually cleanse a person and/or home to facilitate healing. She learned how to pray or sing to call ancestors and Spirit to help with spiritual healing. 

Sweetwater’s approach to healing is holistic in nature incorporating the mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual aspects to help access what the patient needs to facilitate their healing process. She has been to almost every hospital in the area since 1998 praying for people and helping them on their healing path. She has helped four people heal from cancer, remove brain tumors and lung tumors from two people, she helped bring three people out of comas, helped heal severed nerves, and helped with healing traumatic injuries. She specializes in historical trauma healing, and helps with healing PTSD, thereby helping with healing the source of the trauma before it manifests in disease later.

Sweetwater learned about and participated in traditional sweat lodges with Gilbert Walking Bull (Lakota) and Clifford Allen (Nez Perce) she learned how ‘the Creator, created creators’ which basically means we as human beings have an active role in creating our reality. This concept was helpful in that Sweetwater teaches people that they have a role in their own healing. She has served as a traditional consultant to mental health providers in Seattle that serve Native American populations. She has assisted in providing Native healing in conjunction with conventional western psychiatric medical treatment. She has given workshops about decolonization to a coalition of 14 POC health boards in Seattle to help them better serve their community’s cultural and health needs.

Sweetwater has worked for the University of Washington as a medical researcher at the Partnerships for Native Health, a program of culturally appropriate research that spans a wide range of topics, including physical, mental health, addiction, health services, and social issues in Native communities. In her workshops, she shares how meeting Maria Yellow Horse Braveheart changed her life; Dr. Yellow Horse Braveheart was the first Native to research historical trauma in Native populations. This pivotal moment in Sweetwater’s life led her to a different path she currently is on: she teaches workshop participants about how colonization has impacted their own ancestors, and how to heal their own historical trauma.

Publications:

Tsosie U, Nannauck S, Buchwald D, et al. Staying connected: a feasibility study linking American Indian and Alaska Native trauma survivors to their tribal communities. Psychiatry 2011 Winter; 74(4):349–61.

http://guilfordjournals.com/doi/abs/10.1521/psyc.2011.74.4.349

Deborah Bassett, Ursula Tsosie, Sweetwater Nannauck. “Our Culture is Medicine”: Perspectives of Native Healers on Posttrauma Recovery Among American Indian and Alaska Native Patients. The Permanente Journal Winter 2012 – Volume 16 Number 1

http://www.thepermanentejournal.org/issues/2012/winter/4253-pts.html