Min Jee's Lunch

Litany of Salmon

Litany of Salmon began as an art and research project by artist Eileen Klatt about extinct salmon of the Columbia River Bssin. Through collaboration with the artist, Vashon Green School students created a theatre piece for Earth Day 2022 in which the extinct salmon were honored and given a voice. Through art we transform the world. The litany performed was also a call to action. If we do not care for our ecosystems, our homes, the salmon will not return. This is the story told for generations by the first peoples of the Pacific Northwest. This is your next illustration for your main lesson book. You can add people that weren’t there or that you can’t see well. Stay tuned for the story of Earth Day 2022.

Vashon Green School and NW Artists Against Extinction collaborated in Litany of Salmon for Earth Day 2022 on Vashon. Through art we inspire and move people to take action. Save our salmon! Restore the Snake River and breach the dams!

Earth Day 2022 at Dig Deep on Vashon. Watercolors by Eileen Klatt

Snake River Coho

Here is a watercolor by an artist named Eileen Klatt. Over a period of 15 years, she researched and painted 61 species of salmon that were listed as extinct in specific rivers that they had hatched and returned to over thousands of years. If you have watercolors at home you can make a watercolor of these Snake River spawners. Everyone can illustrate them in your main lesson book after listening to the Salomon Woman and her Children story. I suggest doing the illustration in a horizontal format. You may use a double spread if you would like to.

Snake River Coho, extinct

watercolor by Eileen Klatt © 2004

Cursive practice and form drawing exercises

For students interested in practicing their cursive handwriting here is an example of making lists of vocabulary from this lesson unit that we have written in summaries, so the spelling of these words is in your main lesson books if you are uncertain.

Start with a cursive lower case letter “l” repeated without lifting your pencil . then do it upside down on the next line. Take your time. Form drawing is a meditation. Focus and make it beautiful. After all the rows are filled with mirror images of loops go back and create a pattern with color filling in the spaces. I left the top two lines unfinished so you could see the primary pattern clearly. You should fill the entire page with a pattern of color and form.

Salmon Woman and her Children

a story by Jewell Praying Wolf James, Lummi Culture Protection Committee, Lummi Indian Nation.

What are the most important lessons the story of Salmon Woman and her Children teaches?

How do the lessons apply to your relationship with salmon today?

Why are salmon called a keystone species?

Write out each question and then write your answers. If you don’t know how to spell a word then sound it out and spell it phonetically. Discuss the story and questions with your family.

Arch of Life

Here is an illustration of an arc with the keystone at the highest point, a key element of the structure. We have talked about salmon as a keystone species and this is one way to illustrate the concept. Draw the arc, using your entire page, and make a silhouette of a salmon first, at the top. Continue one by one side to side down to the forests and soil blocks of the “arc of life.” Lightly color everything in after all your writing is completed, making sure the words and drawings are visible.

Salmon- keystone species of the Pacific Northwest

Billy Frank Jr. ~ Nisqually activist, statesman, and storyteller

Listen to the story, write your own summary . What are some of the feelings you experience after listening to the story? What does it inspire you to do or think about? Illustrate any part of the story and write a caption for it. We will put all our illustrations and captions in chronological order to retell the story next week.

Billy Frank Jr. ~ Earth Warrior ~ 1931-2014

Billy Frank Jr. was taught and taught others to protect the environment at all costs. He said, “ When the rivers are clean and the salmon are coming home we know we are healthier as human beings.” Billy was a leader in a movement in the Pacific Northwest known as the “fish wars.”

Billy Frank Jr. was arrested more than 50 times in the fight to save salmon and the Indian way of life. He was shot at, spat on, clubbed, punched, and gassed by Washington State Law Enforcement Officers. He never gave up and eventually, the courts upheld a provision in the Medicine Creek Treaty and the Fish Wars ended with what is called the Boldt decision which restored some of the Indian people's rights to fish. Billy Frank Jr then worked for thirty more years with the NW Indian Fisheries Commission to protect endangered salmon whose survival is the focus of tribal life for many in the Pacific Northwest.

Sketches for Shield Back Kelp Crab Field guide

Here are more examples of my sketches / drafts for a final project about my nature name.

Tidal Zones

The intertidal zone is the area where a body of salt water meets the land between high and low tides. There are several types of intertidal zones including, steep rocky ledges, long sloping sandy beaches and combinations of each. Sandy shore ecosystems support burrowing invertebrates while rocky shores support organisms like bivalves, snails and sea stars. All intertidal zones maintain a balance between land and sea. Intertidal zones provide homes to specially adapted marine plants and animals who in turn serve as food for many other animals.

Field Guide Journal

For this unexpected week of no in person school I would like everyone to spend time each day reading, writing and drawing about your nature name. Last week we made booklets that will be part of the final creation that is your field guide. First there is research, which can be done with books and on the computer.

There are seven sections that you will first learn about , then write and draw in the back of your main lesson book. Last week most of you completed About the Author written in the third person and a self portrait.

Description: what group/phylum of animals they belong to, physical characteristics, unique traits/adaptations, status(common, threatened or endangered)

Habitat: tidal zones, and intertidal types of habitat ( rocky, sandy, kelp forests…)

Diet / Food Chain: Who they eat and who eats them and how this changes over their life cycle from egg to adult

Life Cycle: reproduction, life span, migration

Diagram / Illustrations

Cover

About the Author: written in third person and a self portrait

Here are examples of what I am learning and writing and drawing about my nature name, the Shield back kelp crab. Have fun and remember all of the work you are putting into your main lesson book is a rough draft and we will help edit and correct spelling and grammar for your final draft that you will put in the books you all made last week.

This Little Light of Mine

Joy for Ward

This week’s story is about caroling in my apartment building years ago and learning about its impact 50 years after we sang for our neighbors.

Andrea, Jane, Diana and Sandy December 1968 Bay Ridge Brooklyn

Newspaper clipping found years later.

The Well and the Flame

Water Cycle

In the natural world, water is always moving and changing its form. A water cycle is the path it follows as it moves around the Earth in different forms. Water is the only substance on Earth to naturally appear as liquid, solid and vapor.

Djuna's River Story

( Summary)

I was born in water. I’ve always felt comfortable in water. My Moms tell me I would go under water before I could even walk, begging them to let go of my hands so I could try to swim and open my eyes in the watery underworld. Perhaps one of my greatest lessons about water happened on a Winter day in 2011, up at Snoqualmie pass. Pretending to be an ermine, I was leaping and bounding in deep snow, in snow shoes, when I fell into tree well that happened to be next to a cornice of snow hanging over the river. Down into and under the freezing water I went. Fighting for my life I kicked and pulled my way to a rock and held on tightly until my parents, friends and a stranger rescued me. Whether it is in the form of deep snow or a rushing river, I learned that water demands respect.

Like the roots of the tree holding onto and being held by the river bank, I held onto the rock . Then I grasped tightly to the ski pole, that my Mom reached out to me, forming a lasso with my arms wrapped around the rock.

Alexandria Ocasio Cortez - Climate Justice Hero

Alexandria Ocasio Cortez es una heroína de la justicia climática. Como la miembro más joven del Congreso de los Estados Unidos, propuso una legislación llamada Green New Deal. El Green New Deal (GND) tiene como objetivo abordar el cambio climático y la desigualdad económica. Después de graduarse de la universidad y luego de trabajar como camarera para ayudar a mantener a su madre, a pagar la hipoteca de la casa y a mantener a su hermano más joven, se sintió inspirada a postularse para un cargo político al presenciar la protesta liderada por indígenas en Standing Rock. Ahí AOC aprendió a luchar, no solo para buscar un bien propio, pero para buscar el bien de los demás. Entre sus muchos superpoderes, ella es compasiva, bilingüe (habla español e inglés con fluidez) y una comunicadora extremadamente hábil.

Alexandria Ocasio Cortez is a Climate Justice Hero. As the youngest ever female member of the U.S. Congress she proposed legislation called the Green New Deal. The Green New Deal (GND) aims to address climate change and economic inequality. After graduating from college and then working as a bartender to help support her mother she was inspired to run for office upon witnessing the Indigenous led protest at Standing Rock. Among her many superpowers she is compassionate, bilingual ( fluent in Spanish and English) and an extremely skilled communicator.

What if we actually pulled off a Green New Deal? What would the future look like? The Intercept presents a film narrated by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and illu...