The Seven Sisters: Return of the Matriarchy
5:00pm – 7:00 p.m.
The Seven Sisters: Return of the Matriarchy
Indigenous women have played an outsized role in major environmental justice campaigns in the Pacific Northwest. Se’Si’Le, an Indigenous-led nonprofit, is bringing to Orcas Island an event to honor and celebrate these matriarchs as part of its nation-wide 2026 campaign: Seven Sisters—The Return of the Matriarchy. These courageous women have stood up time and again against overwhelming odds, realizing success through the animating restorative power and instinctive wisdom that comes from being the caregivers of life they bring into the world.
They will speak to and through the Sisters’ themes of re-matriation, kin-centric relations, place-based identity, ancestral futures, and intergenerational struggle through to the Seventh Generation.
The Sisters include: Raynell Morris (Lummi Nation), Cyaltsa Finkbonner (Lummi Nation), Chenoa Egawa (S’Klallam/Lummi Nations), Robin Lovelace (Tlingit of Alaska), Fiorella De Le O (Quechua of Peru), Marilene Silva (Macuxi of Brazil), and their non-Native Sisters Eva Schulte (Executive Director, Friends of the San Juans), and Dr. Lisa Dabek (Senior Conservation Scientist, Woodland Park Zoo).
