Se’Si’Le presents:
“A Welcoming” Newileng Si’am: Bagdyfee deeantadiga!
Wednesday, April 16th from 6pm – 8pm
In the Madrona Room
Free Admission
Funding, in part, provided by:
Several of the participants, along with Lummi tribal members, will be sharing an informative, inspired and inspiring evening of culture and ceremony at the Orcas Center on April 16 from 6:00-8:00. Please join us and help welcome our guests to the Lummi homeland.
Dr. Vladislav Inozemtsev
Se’Si’Le is an indigenous-led 501C(3) nonprofit created in 2021 to promote understanding of indigeneity and indigenous ways of knowing nature. Based in the homelands of the Lhaq’temish (Lummi) people, and under the leadership of its President, former-Lummi Chairman Jay Julius, it has conducted local, regional, national, and international environmental campaigns, cultural enrichment programs, and conferences and seminars. It is now in the process of publishing in collaboration with Braided River Press its first book, In the Spirit of Right and Respectful Relations: Conversations about Indigenous Ways of Knowing and Being in Nature. (www.se-si-le.org)
Batani was created in 2004 to organize indigenous peoples in Russia. One of the most important goals of Batani is to protect indigenous peoples’ rights in Russia and around the world. It provides assistance to indigenous communities in their fight to protect their rights, resources, and homelands. Batani is committed to building on indigenous peoples’ vision of being in right relations with nature and strengthening international cooperation. As a result of this activity, it was listed by the Russian government in 2017 as a foreign agent and was banned by the Russian Ministry of Justice. It is now a registered NGO in the United States. (www.batani.org)
Rueben George, Tsleil-Waututh First Nation
Rueben is a Sundance Chief and a member of the Tsleil-Waututh First Nation (TWN). After working as a family counselor for twenty years, he became manager of the TWN’s Sacred Trust initiative to protect the unceded Tsleil-Waututh lands and waters from the proposed Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion. Over the past decade, he has travelled across the world and built alliances with Indigenous people fighting for water, land, and human rights, and has become an internationally renowned voice for such issues. Rueben has been adopted and made a Sun Dance Chief by two Lakota Sioux families, and incorporates his cultural and spiritual teachings in all aspects of his life and work. He is the author of the National Bestseller It Stops Here: Standing Up for Our Lands, Waters and Our People.
JoDe Goudy, Yakama Tribal Member
JoDe is the former Chairman of the Yakama Nation, and has dedicated his life to the protection of Indigenous rights and lifeways, and is expert on the issues of treaty rights, inherent rights, and cultural and ceremonial knowledge. JoDe is founder of Redthought. an educational resource center providing virtual platforms for events, conferences, workshops, and courses. He brings years of expertise on the Doctrine of Discovery. Combined with the mentorship of Steve Newcomb and Peter d’Errico along with the guidance of his Traditional Ways of Life, he has supported the work to help bring awareness to the Domination Dehumanization System.
Vladislav Inozemtsev
Dr. Inozemtsev is a Russian economist and political scientist, focusing on global economic issues, development of the knowledge economy in the West and modernization of the Third
World nations, with special reference to Russia’s history and current policies. He founded the Center for Post-Industrial Studies in Moscow in 1996 and has been its Director ever since,
combining this activity with teaching at Moscow State University and the Higher School of Economics and numerous fellowships held in the US (Johns Hopkins University and CSIS) and Europe (DGAP in Berlin, Institute of Human Sciences in Vienna and Warsaw Institute of Advanced Studies, among many others). Dr. Inozemtsev served as an advisor to the Commission on Modernization of the Russian Economy under President Dmitry Medvedev in 2009-2011, as the chief aide to Mikhail Prokhorov’s presidential bid in 2012, and as a member of Russia’s Open Government’ in 2013-2014. He left Russia after the start of the war with Ukraine in 2014 and lives in Washington. Currently he holds a position of Senior Fellow with the Center for Analysis and Strategies in Europe and is a Special Advisor to Russian Media Studies Project at the Middle East Media Research Institute, a Washington DC-based think tank. Dr. Inozemtsev has authored more than 20 books and is a columnist for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, NRC Handelsblad, The Independent, Gazeta Wyborcza and La Razon.
Jeremiah “Jay” Julius (W’tot Lhem), Lummi Nation
Jay is the founder and President of Se’Si’Le and served on the governing body of the Lummi Nation, for which he also served as Chairman. He has organized and executed Tribal, local,
regional, and national campaigns. A bridge-builder, he uses empathy and storytelling to bring people together. Jay believes in honoring the past and his Nation’s treaty rights and inherent
rights, and is a strong advocate for true government-to-government relations. He takes an uncompromising position to protect their treaty rights, their sacred sites, the environment, and the way of life (Sche Langen) of his people. A lifelong fisher, he currently shares his passion for fishing through his seafood business, where he has two seafood operations in the heart of his people’s original territory in the Salish Sea on San Juan Island. These businesses provide not only an income for his family, but a say to interact with the general public to inform them aboutthe lifeways of his people.
Ms. Mariana Katzarova (Bulgaria) was appointed as Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Russian Federation by the United Nations Human Rights Council on 4 April 2023. In 2014-2016, during the first two years of the armed conflict in Ukraine, Ms. Katzarova led the Human Rights Monitoring Mission team in Donbas as head of the regional office in Eastern Ukraine. For a decade she headed the Amnesty International investigations of human rights in Russia and the two Chechnya conflicts. With the Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights, she focused on the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the creation of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.
Pavel Suliandziga, Udege Nation
Pavel is the recipient of many awards in voice competitions. He was the fist-place winner in 2013 and 2014 with AADGT in New York, performing in Carnegie Hall; third-prize winner in
the Bella Voce competition in Moscow; third-prize winner in the Talents of the World International Competition; the Finalist of Licia-Albenese competition and Giulio Gari competition. He has participated in many operas as core roles, such as Lensky (Eugene Onegin), Tamino (The Magic Flute), Ferrando (Cosi Fan Tutte), Nemorino (L’elisir D’amore), Count Almaviva (Il Barbiere di Siviglia), Don Ottavio (Don Giovanni), Anatol (Vanessa), Tybalt (Romeo et Juliette), Remendado (Carmen), Beppe (Pagliacci), Gastone (La Traviata), PeterQuint (The Turn of The Screw). Pavel is currently working on bringing his Udege knowledge and language into opera.
Pavel Sulyandziga, Sr., Udege Nation
Pavel is an Udege elder and leader. Pavel was born in the village of Krasnyi Yar by Bikin River and has advocated for improvement of the well-being of his community for a long time. He
negotiated with the federal and regional governments to resolve land claims. At the initiative of Pavel, the issue between Russia and China was resolved on opening the mouth of the Ussuri River for the passage of the Ussuri herd of chum salmon, which is the main food for Udege. Having a degree in economics Pavel was at the foundation of the Indigenous movement in Russia and actively participated in the development of the UN declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. He is an elected Honorary Professor of the UNESCO Department of Novosibirsk State University, former member of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (2005-2010) and a former member of the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights (2011-2018).
Tjan Zaochnaya, Itelmen Nation Member
Tjan is a member of the Munich Group of the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) and of the International Committee of Indigenous Peoples of Russia (ICIPR). She was born into a family of gatherers and hunters in Kamchatka. She learned to observe the weather from her grandmother and worked as a meteorologist for several years. The desire to see the world prompted her to go to Leningrad, later to Moscow, where she married a Soviet dissident. She became involved in reprinting Samizdat about human rights violations in the USSR and traveled with her husband to Kamchatka in search of the Itelmen language. In May 1980, shortly before the Olympic Games in Moscow, her family was deprived of Soviet citizenship and expelled from the country. Since then she has been living in Munich, informing the public about the indigenous peoples of Russia. In the 1990s she was allowed to travel to Kamchatka (Russia) and initiated several projects, including a project to support traditional fishing of the Itelmen Peoples of Kamchatka.
