By Mason Soto
In the early hours of January 11, Janene Hampton and her friends were sleeping on the Olympia Capitol campus when they were awoken by policemen in riot gear who demanded they leave, and most activists did so. Janene refused. As they arrested her, they asked her address, and she looked down at the grass around the flag circle and said, “The lawn.”
Four days earlier, Janene and other indigenous activists had gathered outside the Capitol Building at the start of the new legislative season to call their representatives to action on what they understand as disregard for treaty rights, indigenous life, and environmental destruction. They promised to stay the entire sixty days that the Washington State Legislation is open, and since being released from jail, Janene has worked to make good on that promise. In an interview with the Cooper Point Journal on the capitol lawn she still stays on, Janene explained the importance of this work for her and for indigenous communities everywhere. She sees her action and desire for dialogue as a longstanding and important fight of indigenous resistance against government repression, and as she says, “It is a fight that needs to be had.”
“When I stopped watching as a witness, when I started acting, that is when my journey began.”
The indigenous activists have goals that are diverse, yet unified. Respect for the treaty between the Coast Salish Tribes is foremost, in particular regard to the protection of the Salish Sea. They demand the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline not be extended, which now delivers crude oil to refineries in northern Washington, and that action be taken against overfishing. There have already been meetings between the governor and tribe representatives in which nearly two hundred years worth of treaty rights and injustices are being discussed, and other meetings are to come.
As a Colville Okanagan Tribe member, Janene understands her fight as one of her ancestors’, and that her stand is not new to history or to her own life. A couple years ago, she had her own practice as a massage therapist, but when the movement against the Dakota Access Pipeline at the Standing Rock reservation took hold, the activism became a priority for her and she closed shop. “When I stopped watching as a witness, when I started acting, that is when my journey began,” she says of protest and collecting donations. She lost another job because of her stay at the Olympia capitol, and she explained that as responsibilities to the tribe came along, she asked herself where her healing was needed most and the answer was obvious.
Before the arrest, what signified the demonstration were teepee-like structures with painted decorations on them where activists stayed warm, slept, and prayed together. These “tarpees” are an invention of local Saanich First Nations native and organizer Paul Cheyok’ten Wagner who thought up the idea during his stay at Standing Rock two winters ago, and they have become important to facing the elements during activism ever since. Paul is the founder of Protectors of the Salish Sea and he worked with Janene and others to get this demonstration started. Soon after, her and mostly other women stayed on campus for days, speaking with visitors, city workers, and media in and around their camp about their issues until the cops came. The police took the tarpees when they cleared the space, but Janene wants folks to know she is still there. During our interview, folks were at work to get a meeting going between activist and legislators directly that evening, and the mood was hopeful. Still, Janene assured folks that to open a dialogue was not to cede, and she said, “We are just trying to engage— we are not standing down.”
