By Corvo Rohwer, Puyallup Tribal News
Students, staff and community members gathered the morning of Sept. 16 to witness the official unveiling of the Lucy Gerand mural at Chautauqua Elementary School.
Fourth grade student Cora Anne Millard took the podium first to proudly deliver a land acknowledgment in front of her peers. School principal Julie Kangas invited Brandon Reynon from the Puyallup Tribe’s Historic Preservation Department and Vashon Island School District Director Stephanie Spencer to speak about Gerand’s impact on the area.
“Lucy did a really good job at learning her history and learning all about her families. A lot of the information we have today about Vashon Island and information about sx̌ʷəbabš comes from Lucy,” Reynon said. “Listening to her parents, listening to those who were teaching her about why her people lived there and what it was to take care of the land and the animals. She taught us about how they lived, what type of homes the sx̌ʷəbabš lived in on these lands.”
Designed and later installed by Puyallup Tribal Members Daniel Baptista and Anthony Duenas. The mural stands at 16 feet tall and is featured in the school’s playground area. With Gerand prominently in the center, she is accompanied by stylized clams and ducks to bring more color into the piece while also calling back to portions of her history.
“There was a list of things they (Vashon School District) had given to me, saying, ‘We want to include clam digging because she was a clam digger,’ but there’s so much more than just the food that she got to bring to Tacoma to sell. I wanted it not to be the main view. … I tried to put them in there without taking away from the image of Lucy herself,” Baptista said.
Spencer called Gerand a great emblem of perseverance and connection to where we are.
“Someone from the Tribe who is connected to our land who is not some extraordinary leader, just an ordinary person with a lot of perseverance and a lot of know-how and a desire to be in her homeland,” Spencer said.
While the mural provides a welcome move forward to integrating Tribal heritage into the school, this won’t be where it stops. Kangas and Spencer hope this mural installation will be the first step in broadening their Native American curriculum plan, with larger scope projects being in the planning stages.
“In the ensuing months and years, we are going to be writing a curriculum that goes along with Lucy, and all of our students will be learning as part of their journey through their time at Chautauqua about Lucy and her people and what she stands for,” Kangas said.
Spencer elaborated, saying it would be a multi-year process.
“We’re starting with the framework of where we are now: what are we teaching currently in our curriculum, in what ways can we make a better connection to Lucy and her heritage and oral history,” Spencer said. “We really want to weave in her testimony from 1927 about the Treaty of Medicine Creek because it gives such great background about what it was like on the island pre-treaty.”
Beyond just providing an opportunity for learning, Reynon reminded the students attending that the mural represents Tribal identity, courage and standing up for what is right.
“Here she is standing with you every day when you come out and play, to remind you to be strong,” he said.
