Keeping the Fires Burning
How Darrell Hillaire keeps his great-grandfather’s Native American cultural practices alive
By Alex Dupille and Suzanna Leung
A line of photos are illuminated on amber-hued walls as the sun creeps through the blinds. The photos tell the story of The Children of the Setting Sun Productions — everything from canoe racing to live performances. Executive Director and Founder Darrell Hillaire sits beneath the pictures, working on his next idea.
The name, Children of the Setting Sun, dates back to the 1930s when Darrell’s great-grandfather formed a song and dance troupe with the same name. When Darrell’s great-grandfather was alive, he got involved in politics by appealing the government to regain control of their land. His great-grandfather’s final message before passing was to “keep the fires burning.”
“[My great-grandfather] decided that people needed to get educated in this area, so he formed a dance group called Children of the Setting Sun and, we’ve been carrying it on,” Darrell said.
The namesake has been around for almost 90 years, but the production company itself didn’t start until three years ago. Today, CSSP operates out of an office in downtown Bellingham. But in its early days, Darrell and his crew worked out of coffee shops and the Downtown Food Co-op. Their drive came from the realization there were no production companies focusing on Native American stories.
The first story Darrell wrote was “What About Those Promises,” a story about the Lummi people’s land claims versus the United States government.
“I wrote a paper about that, and I thought it was so rich that we should turn it into a play. So we brought it to life,” Darrell said.
Non-Native Americans are typically blind to the issues Natives face. Survey results from Reclaiming Native Truth, a 2016 research project seeking to debunk misconceptions about Native Americans, found two-thirds of respondents didn’t know a Native person. The study showed 13 percent of school curriculums nationwide cover Native Americans post 1900s, and 36 percent of respondents didn’t believe Natives still face discrimination.
Reclaiming Native Truth also surveyed those living near reservations, revealing troubling perceptions others have of Native people like: “They drink too much and get in fights” and “Alcohol abuse. Drug abuse. Child abuse. Gambling addictions.”
Children of the Setting Sun Productions aims to tell their own stories to debunk misrepresentations of Native people in mainstream media.
People are multidimensional. You can represent one part of a person, but that shouldn’t mean that defines them, Mark Nichols from PuppetFace Animation said. Mark is currently helping CSSP produce some of their upcoming films.
CSSP does not just focus on telling entertaining stories. They want to make sure current Native American issues are being told in the mainstream media.
One of these stories is the Lummi people’s relationship with fish, detailed in their upcoming documentary, “Salmon People.”
From 1975 to 2014, the Lummis — who are the largest of the Puget Sound fishing tribes — caught 10.7 million salmon, 23.4 million Dungeness crabs and 9.4 million Pacific Herring. However, drainage from dairy farms upstream in the Nooksack River polluted the waters in Portage Bay — a major water source for Lummi fishing. Environmental issues like these are decimating their community, which is why they are topics CSSP would like to shed light on.
On Jan. 19 and 20, CSSP hosted the Treaty Day Film Festival, an annual event at the Pickford Film Center. They showed five films including one of their own projects “Edge of the Knife,” a film entirely in the Native language Haida. There are only 20 Haida speakers left, so the project was a way of reviving the language. The festival also featured trailers for the upcoming documentaries “Salmon People” and “Waiting for God” directed by Mark Nichols.
Darrell’s favorite story he likes to tell is about the canoe races he was involved in for over 20 years. The races took place in different reservations every year.
“We would celebrate our togetherness and the history of canoe racing. The power of canoe racing. The family aspect,” Darrell said. “Learning how to share, learning how to give back and respect one another all come from that sport.”
These are the cultural values Darrell believes are an integral part of Native American storytelling.
Although CSSP tell their stories through a variety of media like podcasts, short videos, film and photography, one form of entertainment still reigns supreme: theater.
On March 15–16, CSSP put on the Setting Sun Dance Festival in the Syre Auditorium at Whatcom Community College. The event featured performances from the Lummi Blackhawk Singers and Dancers, Git-Hoan Dancers and more.
“Theater is tradition,” Mark said. “The culture inherently has had a very theatrical background, so I think that is something that really pours out of the people when they have a stage.”
Darrell mentioned many Natives are moving out of reservations and into the city. He doesn’t see this as a bad thing but fears the culture might get lost with this current trend. This is why CSSP are focusing on passing down the stories and values important to the Lummi and Coast Salish culture.
“I’ve worked with the Lummi youth for 10 years and something that we talk a lot about is identity,” Ellie Smith, a youth instructor at CSSP, said. “It gives them a sense of identity to connect to their culture, and it gives them a purpose and desire to go through society. They know who they are and where they come from.”
