Keeping Traditions Alive
My granddaughter Trinity was taught by her friend Weston, how to pound smoked and dried KOHO salmon.
This special technique helps to soften the salmon that has been smoked slowly for 8 days.
Trinity is part Tsimshian from northern BC and Weston is a member of the Qualicum Fist Nations, and has learned many dying traditions from his grandmother.
This was also a practice that I had never been taught until earlier the same day the children were doing it.
Very thankful to still be learning these ancient practices.
Art Drum Culture for Schools
Drum Beats for K-10 school programs
One Heartbeat One Nation
It’s sad that we are seeing people venomously attacking others for the choices they are making in this media poisoned world.
I have been observing both sides of the news online, yes you can get mainstream and Blocked media reports on YouTube and Bitchute, and it sickens me that there is so much deception.
I’ve been ridiculed by family, friends and strangers, even mocked, for doing research in all areas, All Areas. I love my children and grandchildren and it’s my duty to know what is happening and why it’s happening.Plus I like to hear other humans points of view, as long as it’s not inspired by mainstream media Fear Porn.
Our constitution states we ALL have a right to choose what we do with our own bodies. It is illegal to be forced or bullied in Any Way to have experimental unproven substances injected into our bodies!
All you bullies are breaking the law with our government’s approval and encouragement, what does that say about our freedoms and our society? And why all of a sudden are people trusting our government? And big Pharmaceutical? They all have very bad track records. Very bad, we finance it all.
I was reading something on online on a Greek translation of the where the word Pharmacy came from: Wikipedia:
No matter what any description says, we should try to wisely discern what kind of spirit is permeating our entire world. It’s been a long prepared program that is tagged as the Great Reset.
Great Reset
Pretty obvious programming when you can take a lot of time to not only think for yourself but just to get a mild gist of what’s truly going down. Covid is just the beginning in a mild sense of the plan.
History repeating itself, but with a much scarier background event. Remember the hand trick. Slight of hand but great distractions on the world stage.
My Tsimshian ancestors warned us and so have all the ancestors of our tribal existence, for thousands of years. It’s much scarier than anyone can ever imagine.
This world war three our controllers have us distracted by is is a picnic compared to the reasons why they have built and are building their underground cities, like all our cave people ancestors did.
All along the 33rd Parallel is where the majority of underground activities are taking place. Apparently the safest place, historically, to hide from electromagnetic plasma forces.
It’s not nuclear bombs or aliens, hah, don’t you see that our controllers are the aliens. They don’t care about us at all. We are their subjects, slaves and we are disposable.
Anyways please do your own research, amazing what really took place in our world, beyond the free mason education program. My cousins new book, ‘Rise of Indigenous Nations’ clarifies are true history and will open your mind to our true history, worldwide.
Soon to be released, Calvin Helin has written yet another well researched book.
Trinity Tells the Thunderbird Story
Publishing Your Book
There are so many people who procrastinated for a few years or more, about writing a book. Maybe it was a personal story journey, a cook book or a story about how the mushrooms take over the world. Hey that sounds interesting.
No matter the topic thousands of people finally got the chance to write or finish writing their first book during the virus lockdown, maybe one good thing about the scary inconvenience changing our world.
My New Book
No I’m not one of those people, and as some of you know I have already illustrated quite a few children’s education and cultural education and storybooks, which have mostly been published by Strong Nations Publishers in Nanaimo.
My greatest creative passion is illustration, always has been but I never focused my attention on it totally because of my Native art career, which started in 1982. In 2014 my longtime friend Terri Mack contacted me and asked if I would be interested in illustrating some books for her new publishing company, of course I said sure.
120 books later we had a couple years where I was dealing with a serious health issue and wasn’t able to create much art, and after my health improved a few years had passed by. Then a few months back Terri contacted me about doing another book, which she co wrote with me. Her concept was nothing short of brilliant, as usual, and wonderfully challenging for me, on the writing spectrum, not my passion or forte.
It’s a bit selfish of me to subtitle this as My New Book because it’s always an Our Book project. So much planning and prepping for a variety of contributors, and in this case our book project embodies an important teaching experience for the benefit of a new team of publishers and book designers, and I am one of those students. Never stop learning do we?
Our Process
I don’t want to get too detailed even though I get a lot of questions about how I have been able to create so many books in a very short time. Technology has certainly made most of the creat process much faster and easier, which is amazing considering when I worked on my first Tsimshian cultural and mythological books in 1990 and then a larger project with big publishing company out of New York, which were all done using felt pens and paint brushes and lots of pencil sketching, that upon every stage had to be couriered back and forth for many months.
Now our main slow down is the overload of books being printed by our trusted printing company, which put a little urgency on getting the new project finished to have it ready to release for the coming school season.
Stumbling Blocks
As in in all projects there are unforeseen stumbling blocks that can be discouraging and overwhelming. As an artist and a writer I have been faced mostly with learning curves that have taught me easier ways of presenting my works in a way that make it easier for the team to what they are trained to do.
With my photoshop computer program I have learned to save many layers in many large files and sent them off into Dropbox files for the book designers and my publisher.
As for my writing of stories and lesson books I am thankful that my editor will spruce up my writing so that I sound much more edumacated than I really am, grammarly speaking. See you are an editor already, you have noticed my personal creative writing slang. Then there is another editor who joins the process to content edit and polish the words for the final creative process. Then off to the printer.
Final Stage
Once again there is another all important stage of the project that will make or brake the investment of time, sweat and dollars, that moment when you have your finished book, all the bar codes and pricing applied to the cover so your book can be put on a retail stores shelves. Yes that would be nice wouldn’t it? Hundreds of stores selling your wonderful new storybook that you had worked on for so many months, if not years.
Sounds good doesn’t it? It’s what you would’ve had to do long before trying sell the finished product, otherwise you will be sitting on an investment of at least five grand, at least. Marketing as most of you know is the key to getting any product distributed to many retail stores, book stores or school libraries.
I was very fortunate in that I was contracted to illustrate education books that had a pretty good distribution across Canada through Strong Nations. I do online promo videos to share some of the stories and was doing quite a few readings at school around B.C. plus I do some Instagram presentations called Story Journeys. I also feature a few information and picture pages on my website.
Bottom Line on Your Book Journey
With great excitement I say Just Go For It! Just plan it out well, do lots of online research and talk to other writers and book illustrators and publishing professionals. If you have a great story be patient with the final manuscript as you share it with publishing companies, which of course most are swamped with new manuscripts, which of course the established writers get the priority but they probably had a much more challenging time getting their first works looked at and published than you and other new writers have the opportunity to do in this time of history.
Advice
Already gave most of it but I encourage new writers and illustrators to never give up, and just because you get turned down a few times it doesn’t mean it’s not good, it just means there’s a better opportunity somewhere down the road.
Keep writing and rewriting and coming up with new stories. You can also start your own story blog or website.
Have fun and thanks for reading this, it took great effort and focus to write this out in the great outdoors near the cottonwood forest where the white spirit wolf roams waiting for it’s mate to return.
YOUNG PEOPLE VIBES
Good day readers, hopefully you are breathing healthy and staying calm. These are challenging changing times that are causing a lot of pressure for our elderly and teenagers. I have drummed and shared my songs and stories with many of them.
I remember how our government and media instilled fear in us when I was a teenager living in Prince Rupert, reporting about the Japanese possibly attacking and then the Russians firing bombs at us, and like now we chose to believe them and send our innocent young people off the fight the planned profit wars. Not much has changed today but there is a lot more quick sensationalism and gossip media programs that of course are controlled by our government and other higher darker powers.
Yesterday I spoke to 5 groups of teens at a school in Qualicum Beach. Preparing for the presentations was exhausting for my mind and spirit, mainly because I didn’t want to put them to sleep, which is where my drum comes in handy, so I chose to share my own story that related to my blended Nationalities and how I saw my Aboriginal relatives who lived on the reservation where my half breed father was born.
I explained to the young people that I never had to deal with any prejudism through my whole life. Number one I don’t look dark enough to fit the Government appointed profile of an Indian and my Dad married a non aboriginal woman, which paled our skin considerably.
There is much more details on these topics but I mainly wanted to focus on how I came to be a well know Aboriginal artist and cultural educator and how my art helped me get through some pretty tough down times.
I really feel for our children and young people going through all this dramatic world issues and continual fear porn pushed continuously through social media. I hated myself as a teen and had so much anger in me that I escaped into drugs, alcohol and violence and even attempted suicide a couple of times, fortunately unsuccessfully.
I hope and pray we can find hope in unifying as the human race rather than the sheep show, as we are running out of time with what tiny bit of freedom our controllers are allowing us to have.
I drum with many people and find that it helps to soothe theirs fears and enhances their well being amidst the dirty energy and negative gossip programs on tv.
Blessings of unity is my prayer, thanks for reading my story and I hope you and your loved ones are staying strong and unified.
The Truth About What’s Really Happening- not a conspiracy theory. The Elite have been working on a world domination plan for many years now, the virus is just one part of the plan, as their Founder Klaus Schwab, Prince Charley, Bill Gates and many other have proclaimed, ‘This is all a small window to reset the world…You will own nothing, and you will be happy. Or else.’ Yes our leaders are a part of it too. And yes We are all it it together, like it or not.
Oolicans
MOST IMPORTANT LITTLE FISH
There are many foods that my Tsimshian ancestors and family members gathered through out every year, never thought I’d live to see the day that we weren’t fishing in our family, which is the same with most of my family and tribal people.
I wasn’t exposed to full time practices of the hunting and gathering as a child because my Tsimshian Father married my Norweigan Mother and settled in the town of Prince Rupert, We lived a few hours by boat away from where Dad was born, which was the village of Port Simpson, now Lax Kw’alaams.
Port Simpson was once called Fort Simpson back in the early 1800s when the first trading post was established on the northern coast.
It is now called Lax Kwalaams, place of wild roses.
I remember spending every summer and every weekend working on our commercial fish boats, preparing for all the different fishing seasons, like salmon, halibut and the herring.
I learned a lot about travelling the coastal waters of BC and we had wonderful times exploring and gathering foods for the winter and just feasting on the abundance of everything fresh from pristine coastal waters. We never thought of a shortage of anything but we knew about preservation and stocking up for the winter, mainly by freezing and jarring salmon, halibut and clams. A couple relatives smoked and dried just about everything, some of it I didn’t like, especially smoked black cod, herring and oolican.
I never paid much attention to what was left of the culture, there wasn’t much of it to be seen then except for a goat horn spoon and a long beak ashtray which both were very rustic and non traditional to our Tsimshian roots.
I remember salmon fishing while other kids had summer holidays. Sometimes I made really good money but that never really mattered to me, I would rather have been back home with my friends or drawing pictures.
In 1972 we moved south leaving the last of our native lifestyle behind, most of it anyways. It was a non impressionable lifestyle that was almost faded completely from our tribe.
Most of the northern family still fish and gather seaweed and shellfish. Since my Father died my older brother quit fishing too. I quit in 1979, by accident, and through my recovery time I was invited to attend a native art school in Hazelton, a small River side community 3 hours east of Prnce Rupert.
I remember salmon fishing in the summer and then herring fishing in February and long lining halibut in the month of May. Ive never been involved in any oolican harvesting or drying and smoking. It took me many years to acquire a taste for the grease, and was never a big fan of eating the little oily nutritious fish. Good way to be left alone after eating it.
The eulachon Thaleichthys pacificus is a small fish of the smelt family (Osmeridae). Eulachon
are found only in the Pacific Northwest, from California to the Pribiloff Islands.
Granny said-There were some years, they were so plentiful that you could just go down and hand-fish them off the side of the river bank. Just walk down and grab them and put them in your bucket…there’d be a four foot black streak going up the side of the bank
(Anfinn Siwallace, Nuxalk Nation cited in Moody 2008).
I never did the EULACHON runs, I don’t even remember my dad doing it. Our family usually bought or traded it with the Nass River fisherman of the Nisga Nation.
It was pretty strong compared to the grease we get from the Knight Inlet area. Sometimes it was blended with seal oil, which made it smell stronger and it didn’t last as long unless you froze it.
There used to be big eulachon runs up the Skeena River, but not for quite a number of years. For over 3 generations my Tsimshian ancestors built and lived in cedar longhouses for their summer fishing life. Moving back out to the coast again after the salmon and eulachon (oolican) run was finished.
In the month of February (Hobiyee), the people worked together for the ooilcan harvest and sea-lion hunts. In the oolican season there is the first catch and the second catch. The first catch is usually to test and determine if the oolicans are ready for harvest. If they are too small in size, the people wait for the second run, leaving the first run to spawn and thrive.
The village smoke-houses have to be prepared also. The rafters and the oolican sticks have to be washed and cleaned, which they always were after each smoking session. Then, wood for smoking or curing is collected for the smoke-houses. Usually the preference for smoke-house wood is birch wood or cottonwood. While the people in the villages are doing their work of smoking oolicans and sea-lion meat, there are people at Grease camps located at Fishery Bay. It is here that they prepare the Oolican grease.
The preparation of oolican grease is a very strenuous and industrious job that can take up to six weeks to be prepared right.
Very few oolican are harvested traditionally anymore, mainly Knight inlet and up the Nass River are the last located in BC.
THIS EXERPT IS FROM A BC UNIVERSITY STUDY
1996), or a single species whose loss would impact
many others (Mills and Doak 1993). Examples incl
ude coral polyps that create an entire reef environment and sea otters (Enhydra lutris) that structure kelp forest communities (Estes
et al.1989). Eulachon are ecologically-important in th
at they deliver a large pulse of food and
nutrients in early spring when other food sources
are scarce or lacking, and may be critical to the
energetics of Steller’s sea lion
Eumetopias jubatus, (Sigler et al.2004). Willson and Halupka
(1995) consider anadromous smelts as a keystone species based on over forty predators that depend on them.
The arrival of eulachon in early spring when dried salmon and other food sources were low or exhausted made them critically important prior to European contact. Eulachon were called ‘starvation fish’ in Tsimshian, ‘salvation fish’ in Nisga’a and ‘Preservation’ fish in Nuxalk
Grease.
I remember that we ate lots of dried, frozen and smoked fish and seaweed, cockles, clams, scallops and of course Dads favourite delicacy, the abalone, almost extinct in our northern waters because of piracy and disrespect to the future reproduction of the species.
An ecological keystone species is what really stands out as the most important staple of not only the northern West Coast Indians, but also every other living creature of the same territory.
Not much hope for the future of all our species in this threatened world, sadly. The controllers have no intention of wanting a certain amount of us to survive. The secret society of my Tsimshian ancestry has taught me a lot about what the controllers are doing and why they do it. Many will perish and get consumed by their worldly addictions and sensationalism of news, music and entertainment, while the most important things are vibrations that are non existent to them, the sheep and the goats.
Pray for unity and think for yourself, then your eyes will open.
Note:I wrote this a number of years ago, and have since seen the oolican fishery still declining, and continued recklessness by the government in the way it mishandles the fisheries, and everything else.
For sale or trade for vehicle valued at 19k 7×7′ Raven in flight
Bill Helin Creative 