It was a Friday night at The Cove Restaurant and Lounge in Lynnwood, packed with people enjoying the nautical ambiance and screened sporting events. Nicole Suyama and Logan Ulavale stood at a stand of mics at the entrance, prepping to perform.
That night, at The Cove, Suyama and Ulavale were there to raise money for a friend’s soccer team to travel to Egypt for a game. They were joined by one of the players, who was on drums for the night. The group alternated between musicians rocking out classics like Elton John’s “Rocketman,” The Steve Miller Band’s “The Joker,” and Britney Spears’ and Madonna’s “Toxic.”
Those are the most mainstream songs that the duo performs. Suyama and Ulavale are part of Red Eagle Soaring, an organization made for Indigenous youth between the ages of 10 and 19 to connect over the traditions of their tribes, make music and put on theatrical performances.
Suyama has been working with Red Eagle Soaring since she was 11. Now, she’s the organization’s program manager.
Red Eagle Soaring was the first place she connected with other Indigenous people — her mother was adopted by a Japanese family at a time when Indigenous children were being taken from their parents, although Suyama doesn’t know if this is what happened with her family. Indigenous children were taken from their families and sent to boarding schools to divorce them from their culture and traditions. Suyama’s mother found out later that her own mother was Eskimo, from Kotzebue, Alaska. Her tribal roots are from the Inupiaq tribe.
At Red Eagle Soaring, Suyama met other Indigenous young people and experienced tribal customs. There are many tribes in the area, and the group focuses predominately on the traditions of tribes from the Pacific Northwest.
With Red Eagle Soaring, Suyama learned traditional drum making techniques using wood from the cedar tree and deer hide, although at the time she didn’t have the upper body strength to stretch the sinew taut over the drum. She learned to warm the drum with a hair dryer. She painted the drum with a seal to symbolize her birth family, and learned, in the traditions of tribes in the Pacific Northwest, that drums should always be placed face up.
Tribes in the area also have a long tradition of canoe trips, which come with lessons of their own.
“If you call a canoe a ‘boat,’ you will be thrown over,” Suyama said.
Red Eagle Soaring works with youth to create original works of theater based in Native traditions. They bring in storytellers to tell traditional tales for inspiration, which is a lesson in itself — in some traditions, a person needs to be taught a story eight times before they can tell it themselves.
“After you memorize it, it is very important to tell it. And then tell it some more. Then it will be locked into your heart,” Suyama said, quoting Roger Fernandes of the Lower Elwha S’Klallam tribe, the storyteller who taught her.
The youth also write plays based on their experiences and concerns. Those sorts of plays range in subject matter, Suyama said. Younger participants focus on topics like littering or water, while older teens want to write about bullying or even suicide. The size of the groups vary based on the time of the year, with smaller cohorts consisting of 10 people and larger groups, in the summer, reaching as high as 25 to 30.
When Red Eagle Soaring gets called to perform, they will often start with traditional hand drum songs before Ulavale joins her with his striped guitar. The group often sticks with songs specifically written by and for Red Eagle Soaring so that they feel confident that they can perform them in front of other people, Suyama said.
“There are a lot of songs that are done for ceremonies for certain families and for certain tribes and nations that you have to have permission to perform publicly,” Suyama said. “They’re not allowed to be recorded and you can’t sing it if you haven’t gotten the permission, so I stick to what I know I can do.”
Most recently, Red Eagle Soaring partnered with the Seattle Center on a series of performances, at least two of which had to be canceled because of weather. But the organization has a group called “Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow” that are on call to perform for groups that want to experience their art.
Red Eagle Soaring provides a space for Indigenous youth, and those that start with the organization will often come back for new workshops. Finding new participants can be challenging, although the advent of social media has expanded the organization’s reach, Suyama said.
Anybody between the ages of 10 and 19 who identifies as Indigenous can join without getting into the complicated politics of proving heritage, Suyama said.
Ashley Archibald was the editor of Real Change through July 2023, and is now a communication specialist for Purpose. Dignity. Action.
Read more of the Feb. 2-8, 2022 issue.