On a languid spring evening in South Seattle, the wind ruffled through a web of fabric strung across the courtyard of Mini Mart City Park. Long, ripped strips of red, black, marigold, and white twisted, braided, and tangled overhead. They were anchored at points along the building’s roof and converged around a pole that rose, treelike, from the center of a 12-foot-diameter base of charred plywood. Around the perimeter of the base, large chunks of diatomite—a chalky rock composed of fossilized aquatic organisms—were placed at intervals.
Viewers tightened around the makeshift medicine wheel as Timothy White Eagle, chanting, dipped the ends of fresh cedar fronds into a pail of river water, which he splashed across the ground. He picked up a piece of diatomite. With the stone in one trembling hand and a spoon in the other, he began to scrape at it, the blunt curve of the utensil shattering the stone’s softness. As the incantatory drone of White Eagle’s vocables melted into the sound of rushing river water mixing through speakers, the diatomite diminished, stroke after stroke, scattering and exploding into a fine, particulate ash that dusted everyone and everything—the backs of hands, phones, clothes, the burnt black wood.
It was a ritual to manifest healing at the opening of Once Wild River,the culmination of a yearlong artist-in-residence initiative piloted by the Environmental Protection Agency. Six estuary watersheds across the US were selected; the Green-Duwamish Watershed was one, and White Eagle was the artist selected for it. His task: spend an entire year with the river and relay to us what he found.
To understand the exhibition, one must first understand the Duwamish River, which—like many rivers in the US—has been altered beyond recognition. The original estuarine mudflats and marshes were filled and replaced by a deep, straight, industrialized channel to allow ships passage. The last remaining undeveloped meander is a tiny bend that curls around Kellogg Island, salvaged only because the remains of an ancestral Duwamish village were discovered there in 1977. A century of industrial dumping by shipping, aviation, and manufacturing companies left the river so contaminated that in 2001, the lower five miles were named an EPA Superfund Site—a designation given to the most hazardous waste sites in the US. At the mouth of the river, where the brackish river water meets the bay, the bottom is so thick with heavy metals and toxic waste that bottom feeders like flounder and crabs are unsuitable to eat.
In some ways, it seems White Eagle was made for the work of listening to a river. The 59-year-old artist, half white and half Indigenous, is descended from the Mohave tribe, “the People of the River.” At three days old, he was adopted into a white Mormon family in Montesano, Washington. He was one of the only children of color at his school, and one of the only Mormons. He was nerdy and artsy, but couldn’t draw to save his life, so he was never the star pupil in any art class. He was always a bit of a class clown, but never over-the-top. He took eighth grade algebra with Kurt Cobain—his brush with PNW fame, he notes, wryly. He was also gay. “I was a big screaming queen trying not to be screaming,” he says with a smile. “I was not quite like the other boys.”
White Eagle’s father was very strict and very Mormon, but also had an independent streak. “He had an idea that God understood him,” he says. “Even if he wasn’t doing things right according to Mormonism—having a beer with the loggers in town or not tithing so he could pay off his house—he just knew that God gets who I am, and it’s okay.”
That unorthodox spirituality set the tone for White Eagle’s own emergent, very nontraditional relationship to the divine. He doesn’t recall how or when it started, but his early 20s became a testing ground for experimenting with ritual as he sought to develop his spirituality. “Nobody taught me how to do it. Nobody said, ‘You should go do this,’” he says. “Some early attempts with art friends out at the beach were really wonky and didn’t work.”
After earning a theater degree from University of Utah, Salt Lake City, he moved to Seattle for an internship at Seattle Rep. The opportunity fell through due to a misunderstanding—he was underqualified—but he stayed anyway, working at small black-box theaters and restaurant jobs. He also discovered the Radical Faeries at Wolf Creek Sanctuary in Southern Oregon. “That’s where I started learning about traditional pagan ritual structure,” he says, “how to hold space for a community, how to state intention, how to make public prayer.”
After scraping a few years at an Italian restaurant in Pioneer Square called Umberto’s (plus a small influx of cash from a death in the family), he’d saved enough to open his own cafe and “home for freaks”—the Coffee Messiah. Located off John Street and Denny Way on Capitol Hill, the Coffee Messiah opened during Gay Pride of 1995, complete with a Jesus photo op (White Eagle dressed as Christ) and a coin-operated discotheque bathroom. Soon after, cafe regular Marcus Wilson—who would go on to open Pony—conceived the Cabaret of Despair, a Berlin Stories–inspired, drag-studded open mic that ran nightly from 2 a.m. to dawn. Fueled by risk, chaos, inclusivity, and fun, the Coffee Messiah thrived for five years, until the arrival of a Starbucks up the street brought revenue to a dribble, and White Eagle sold the shop in 2000.
Over the next decade, he traveled, cleaned houses, and refined his wonky beach rituals. Through the Radical Faeries, he connected with Shoshone and Paiute mentors who introduced him to traditional native practices. Though he had long believed he was White Mountain Apache—a mistake tied to his adoption records—he only recently discovered through DNA research that his lineage is Mohave.
Over time, threads of tribal tradition, theater, pagan ritual, queerness, and Mormonism fused into the immersive ceremonial works that define his practice and emerge in projects like The Red Room, The White Room, and The Indigo Room,which all reimagine sacred space. Modeled after the Celestial Rooms of the Mormon temple—accessible only to the “pure of heart”—The White Room functioned as a public space for healing ceremonies, drum circles, themed dinners, and even birthday parties. Even at its most serious, White Eagle’s work has a side of humor that reveals his trickster streak. He was always a bit of a class clown, after all.
When White Eagle was awarded the Green-Duwamish Watershed residency, he spent the first three months researching the river’s geologic history. He and his longtime collaborator, photographer Adrain Chesser, walked along the upper parts of the watershed inaccessible to the public, accompanied by geologists and hydrologists. “We walked the river taking photos for three months,” says White Eagle. “We were still trying to figure out our way into the project. Then I got sick.”
It was a fluke they caught it so early: a stubborn double gastrointestinal infection kept sending White Eagle to the hospital. While there, doctors discovered stage one cancer of the pancreas. “It was really, really lucky,” he says. “And so it happened that in the middle of this consideration of a toxic river, I get this toxic diagnosis.”
As chemo treatments ensued and he wrestled with this new, unexpected component of his residency, White Eagle gathered a team of additional artists to help realize the project—artists whose work already centered on the Duwamish, or connected in some way to water and restoration. The exhibition would be mounted at Mini Mart City Park, a gas-station-turned-art-venue that is also an active subsurface soil remediation site.
Each of the artists pulls on a different thread tethered to the river: Laura Wright created wallpaper using pigments derived from foraged hyperaccumulator plants—species used in the EPA’s restoration efforts for their ability to absorb heavy metals from contaminated soil. Crystal Cortez’s immersive audio compositions are made from field recordings of the river overlaid with oral histories by Native elders. Tapestry-like images by Epiphany Couch are assembled from photographs mounted to birch panels, encased by weavings made from reclaimed river trash, like tarp and caution tape. Sarah Kavage’s sculptures are made with wild harvested willow and found Douglas fir branch.
Anchoring the exhibit are Chesser’s photographs, conducted during their long walks. Images like the one of three cranes arched against a silver sky hover somewhere between documentary and dream. “They’re these static, stiff material forms that, when looked at from the right perspective, take on a kind of archetypal presence,” says White Eagle. “We’re playing with bringing in that industrial spirit energy.”
Over the past two decades working together, Chesser and White Eagle’s approach to photography has become a ritual of its own. “A physical object, like a photograph, can carry medicine,” says White Eagle. “These objects, these photographs, have the capacity to transmit energy. If we start our creation process with the intention of making a medicine object, a photograph can heal.”
Chesser’s photos are typically drenched in color. These are a departure: not quite black-and-white, the deep darks of the images shift toward tints of ochre and red cedar—both traditional healing medicines that are a recurring theme through both the artwork and site. (Cedar branches line the edges of the exhibition floor, extending outside into the court.)
Chesser also documented White Eagle’s physical transformation during the course of the residency. A video captures the moment he takes shears to his long, flowing hair, bent over a table, as a black cat slinks in and out of the frame. When done, he carefully wraps the bundle in a piece of cloth, secured with ribbons. On a footbridge over the river, he drops it in—a prayer, a gift.
After a year with the river, what did White Eagle find? Not answers. “I know less than I did when I started,” he says, “because I’m aware of the questions. Part of my approach has been learning how to be in a reciprocal relationship with the river. It’s a foreign concept to colonizing minds. How do you give back? It seems almost impossible, but one place to start is gratitude, even if it’s just for the tranquility you experience when you’re sitting by it, hearing it.”
Alongside photographs of the river itself are a series of Chesser’s portraits documenting the dxwdəwabš (Duwamish) Canoe Family, a group representing the Duwamish Tribe of Seattle, dedicated to preserving Coast Salish traditions, including annual tribal journeys across the water.
“For me, the healing is present in those pictures,” says White Eagle. “Or in the incredible portrait of a Duwamish tribal member who is 2 years old. It feels so optimistic. For me, the whole reason for the show is the optimism contained in these images. One of the most important things is to recognize that the river’s original caretakers are still here, still trying to carve out a toehold of culture and space. We need to listen to what Native people have to say. Had we listened from the beginning, we’d be in a very different place.”
The Stranger’s office will be open for our second Capitol Hill Art Walk event on June 11 (6–8 p.m.) and will feature work by Timothy White Eagle in collaboration with Adrain Chesser and Steven Miller. Attend the closing reception for Once Wild River at Mini Mart City Park on June 20, from 3–5 p.m.