Author: Kim Kalliber

LEE-TE-Ahwit Krystal RayAnne Cooper (1992 – 2017)

LEE-TE-Ahwit Krystal RayAnne Cooper aka Luvy Krystal was born to Pamela and Douglas Cooper on January 28, 1992. Ahe was a Lifetime resident of Tulalip, WA. She is survived by her mother and father; brothers, Codeey Billy Johnny, Kayden Johnny and sisters, Kesha and KaylishiousBoome; grandparents, Jan and Willie Cooper, Clarissa Johnny; uncles, Merle and Albert Johnny, Aunty Edith and Robe Cooper; grand-uncles and aunties, Rozelda Roberts, Shar Roberts, Sandra and Pete Joseph, Smoky and Leah Roberts. She was preceded in death by her grandpa, Albert Johnny Sr., and aunties, Alfreda and Alberta Johnny. Services will be Monday, September 11, 2017. Leaving Schaefer-Shipman Funeral Home at 3 p.m., proceeding to 8125 Reuben Shelton Drive one last time. We will be leaving the home on Tuesday, September 12, 2017, at 9 a.m. to Greg Williams Gym for 1910 Indian Shaker Church service at 10 a.m. with burial to follow at Mission Beach Cemetery.

YES! Youth Entrepreneurship Summit

By Micheal Rios, Tulalip News

Engaging and inspiring Native American youth toward success, a one-of-a-kind Youth Entrepreneurship Summit (YES!) was held in the Tulalip Resort Casino’s Orca Ballroom during the afternoon of Tuesday, September 5.

Designed for Native high school and college-aged students interested in business and entrepreneurship to hone their skills and learn more about what it takes to become successful in business, YES! offered Tulalip youth especially an opportunity to hear good words and success stories from Native business owners around the area.

To get the eager young minds’ creativity flowing, the summit opened up with a thought exercise. Everyone closed their eyes and pictured themselves in a tunnel, and at the end of the tunnel there is a ball of light.

“That ball of light represents your success, your dreams, your ambition, and everything you are striving for in life. That’s what is at the end of your tunnel,” declared event co-M.C. Dyami Thomas (Klamath/Leech Lake Ojibway). “Now envision on both sides of your tunnel are open doors. These open doors represent your struggles, obstacles, and all the negativity in your life. These doors stay open and there are thousands of them, but as you zoom towards the ball of light and move passed each door it closes. You can look right and look left into the open doors, but never walk through them because once you walk through one you never know if can get back on your path to the ball of light.

“This tunnel, your tunnel, represents tunnel vision to the person your meant to become. Always see that light at the end of the tunnel. When you feel lost, sad or lonely then close your eyes and see yourself in that tunnel and look towards your ball of light. Some of us like to quit and give up because they aren’t making big steps, so they start making excuses and entering those open doors only to never make it back on their path. You all have to understand that no matter if it’s a big step or many small steps, each step is heading in the same direction, and it’s toward that ball of light; to your success and ambition making your dreams come true.”

Louie Gong, Nooksack, artist and owner of Eighth Generation in Seattle.

Following the exercise, audience members were amped to hear several successful Native entrepreneurs share their stories. Guest speakers included Louie Gong (Nooksack – artist and owner of Eighth Generation), Rebecca Kirk (Klamath – singer, actress, and talent manager), Jordan Skye Paul (CRIT Mohave – user experience manager at Pinterest), and Dyami Thomas (model, actor and motivational speaker).

Among the crowd of engaged youth was a family of Tulalip tribal members, mother Angela Davis and her three children Abigail, Samuel, and Samara Davis. Angela said she was excited to bring her kids to the Youth Summit after seeing a flyer online, “Entrepreneurship is something we’ve been talking about with our children for years now. We encourage them to be their own individual, to be unique, and embrace their Native American culture. Attending this event is another way for us to encourage and implement what we’ve been teaching them.”

11-year-old Samuel commented his takeaway from the Youth Summit was that you can start from scratch and make something really big out of your passions. Younger sister, 9-year-old Abigail added, “I learned you can build amazing things if you really put your mind to it. If you try really hard and focus on what you want to make out of yourself, then you can make it happen.”

With encouraging and inspiring feedback from future Tulalip entrepreneurs, YES! was effective at engaging the youth who attended and helping to plant seeds for future success.

A Step in the Right Direction

Tulalip community participates in International Overdose Awareness Day

By Kalvin Valdillez, Tulalip News 

The opioid and heroin crisis has continued to escalate over recent years in America. The state of Washington sees approximately three-thousand deaths annually due to drug abuse, according to the Washington State Department of Health. In Snohomish County there are nearly seven-hundred drug-related causalities per year, with the largest amount of overdoses occurring in the Everett-Marysville-Tulalip area. A recent study conducted by the University of Washington Alcohol and Drug Abuse Institute shows that thirty-one percent of deaths statewide can be credited to drug overdose.

International Overdose Awareness Day is held each year on August 31 to bring attention to the drug epidemic, educate community members and remember the loved ones who have fallen to their addiction. This year the Tulalip community participated in International Overdose Awareness Day with the Fed Up? Wake Up! Overdose Awareness event hosted by the Tulalip Community Health Department.

“One of the important things that Community Health believes in and wants to bring to the community is meeting the people right where they are,” explains Tulalip Community Health Nurse, Suzanne Carson. “This event is to share with community members what they can do to educate themselves about the overdose problem; what overdoses look like, what withdrawal looks like, what the risk factors are – that kind of education, so they know what they’re looking at when they see someone who is struggling.

“We also want to acknowledge those loved ones who we have lost to an overdose and the lives that have been affected by an overdose,” she continues.  “An overdose not only affects the person who took the drugs, but everybody in the community. The hearts are impacted every time the community loses or almost loses somebody and our goal is to give the community a chance to reflect on the lives that have been affected.”

Internationally, people are encouraged to show support by wearing purple and silver on Overdose Awareness Day. A trail of shoes, spray-painted purple and silver, were lined from Marine Drive, alongside Totem Beach Road, leading to the new Tulalip Community Health Department.  According to Suzanne, each shoe on the ‘trail of empty shoes’ symbolizes a life lost or a life affected by an overdose.

In 2014, the Tulalip Tribes adopted a Good Samaritan aw, the Lois Luella Jones law, which shields addicts from arrest and prosecution when reporting an overdose. Sergeant William Santos of the Tulalip Police Department and Tulalip tribal member Rico Jones-Fernandez were in attendance to speak to the community about the law. In 2011, Lois Luella Jones lost her life to an overdose. Authorities believe she could’ve been revived, however her peers did not call for medical assistance, fearing they would be arrested. Her son Rico created the Good Samaritan law and has since dedicated his life to raising overdose awareness in the community by running the Tulalip Clean Needle Exchange Program.

During the event, community members painted rocks, in dedication to those who lost their life to an overdose, and placed them in the Remembrance Rock Garden, located in front of the Community Health Department. Many of the rocks in the Remembrance Garden display the names of overdose victims as well as personal messages from the community members. Tulalip community member and Yakima tribal member, Scott Rehume, explained the story behind the rock he designed for his brother, Kevin.

“I just went to his funeral the other day,” he emotionally states. “When they said he passed away, I asked how – they said he OD’ed on heroin. He never even messed with it before, at the beginning of his usage he ends up doing too much and dying. When I came back to Tulalip from the funeral, I saw they had this overdose awareness event, so I decided to show up and make him a rock.”

The event concluded with a Naloxone training to better equip community members with the knowledge of how to revive someone who has overdosed.

“Naloxone is the opioid antagonist,” says Suzanne. “The receptors in the brain that opioids and heroin bind to, Naloxone goes in there and kicks them of those receptors so that the opioid is out of their system immediately. It’s what can save a life when somebody is overdosing. By taking the training, Tulalip tribal members are sent home with a free Naloxone kit that they can use to save a life.”

The Fed Up? Wake Up! event brought valuable information to the Tulalip community. Tulalip Tribes Chairwoman, Marie Zackuse, believes that events like the Overdose Awareness are a step in the right direction during these trying times of the opioid and heroin epidemic.

“When this affects your family member, you become helpless,” Marie expresses. “You don’t know what to do because you love them and you want to be able to help them, but you lose the ability to figure out what you can do to help – these types of get-togethers can help us. Seeing the flyer brought me to bring my daughter and we’re hoping to bring more family members together to just talk about it, because it is hard to talk about and we need to be able to support one another.

“I’m so thankful for the staff that brought this all together because it shows that we do care for our members,” continued Marie. “Each and every one of our families in this community are affected and we don’t want to lose one more person, because that person is our child, our grandchild. If we can all come together and take back our community, we can save some lives.”

Huckleberry Harvesters

By Micheal Rios, Tulalip News 

The gate to swədaʔx̌ali huckleberry fields was opened from August 25 to September 10, allowing tribal members a two-week window to walk in the shadows of their ancestors and harvest the elusive mountain huckleberry. Traditionally, the end of summer meant an annual trek of berry picking parties into the high regions of the Cascade Mountains to harvest the rare and sought after dark maroon huckleberries.

Mountain huckleberries are larger than the lowland evergreen variety and are more delicately flavored. They are found on high sunny slopes at about 5,000 feet elevation, and ripen towered the latter part of August and into early September. Fortunately, the Tulalip Tribes and its Natural Resources team has invested countless man hours and resources into a co-stewardship area located within the Skykomish Watershed, a place where our ancestors once resided. This pristine co-stewardship area allows tribal members to learn and practice traditional teachings in an ancestral space called swədaʔx̌ali (Lushootseed for “place of mountain huckleberries”).

Over Labor Day weekend, a number of Tulalips used the holiday to undertake the 2-hour journey to swədaʔx̌ali and spend a day breathing the fresh mountainous air while berry picking under the summer sun. Among the harvesters was first-time berry picker and Lushootseed language teacher Maria Martin.

“It was a beautiful, uplifting experience. Once we hit the forest, where there were no buildings, no cars, no people, just trees…my soul soared. I couldn’t not smile,” reflects Maria on her time at swədaʔx̌ali. “I’ve read and heard stories of people out picking berries and I always wondered how that felt. I didn’t grow up doing traditional things. I’m lucky enough to have the opportunity to speak my language, but that is only a piece of my culture.

“Berry picking felt natural, like I’ve always done it. The smells were intoxicating. The sounds beautiful, from the buzzing bugs and chirping birds to the families sharing laughs and love. These are the meaningful experiences that we all need to share in. While I was picking I told myself the story of “Owl lady and Chipmunk”, and sang Martha Lamont’s berry picking song; connecting the pieces of my culture, my words with my actions I felt whole. When I returned home I gave away a batch of my berries to an elder, which was very meaningful to me. Those that can hunt and gather are responsible for gathering enough for those that cannot. We are all family and we all are responsible for taking care of one another.”

Several tribal members who recently returned from Canoe Journey also used Labor Day to pick mountain huckleberries, including George Lancaster, Shane McLean and Dean Pablo. George brought up his nephew Brutal and his aunt Lynette Jimicum so they could soak up the experience as well.

“It’s awesome having the opportunity to be up here,” says George. “Being up here, I remembered blackberry picking with my grandma as a kid and that made me happy. I look forward to using my harvested berries to make pie. I love pie!”

“I absolutely love being here,” adds Lynette. “Having my grandson Brutal here and being able to teach him that there’s more activities than just playing video games. It means a lot to me to show him the value of outdoor activities, like berry picking and hiking in the woods.”

For tribal member Shane McLean, his thoughts have been impacted by the ongoing natural disasters like the droughts plaguing the Pacific Northwest and raging forest fires throughout the region causing smoke and ash to cloud the skies.

“My short-term goal is to give some berries away, my long-term goal is to get a four year supply. Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the prophecy telling us to be prepared for the future,” states Shane. “It’s said you should have four years of your traditional food stored away, just in case there’s something that might happen. We can see there’s natural disasters happening all over. I’m thankful the berries are even here to be harvested.”

Michael Rae Sheldon (1952 – 2017)

Michael Rae Sheldon, 64 of Tulalip, WA, passed away August 28, 2017, four months from his 65th birthday. He was born December 28, 1952, in Everett, WA, to Melvin R. and Nola Sheldon. Mike grew up his early years in Tulalip before moving to Skagit County where he graduated from Burlington Edison High School. He attended Washington State University and completed his BA degree from Antioch University in 1996. Mike began his fishing career in 1973 working as a crew member on a Purse Seiner in Alaska. After the Bolt decision he transitioned to a gill netter. Mike owned and operated the “old Salty” for many years. Mike was a man of many trades but his true love was fishing. He met Kathy in 1986 and they married in 1996. Mike was a proud member of the Tulalip Tribes and he loved to do native art. Mike is survived by his wife, Kathy; daughter, Kandida Jones; two grandchildren Tyler and Kayla; siblings, Mel Sheldon, Toni Sheldon, Tina (Jim) Dillon, Nola “Jr” Two Feathers; his aunt, Marlene Petersen; and numerous nieces, nephews and cousins. He was preceded in death by his parents, and son, Dillon Michael Sheldon. Services will be held Friday, September 8, 2017, at 12:00 p.m. at Schaefer-Shipman.

Washington State University – Everett 

Submitted by Jeanne Steffener, Higher ED

Washington State University (WSU) – Everett opened it’s doors on August 18, 2017 with a ribbon cutting ceremony. Hundreds of new students, potential students and those just interested in seeing Everett’s newest educational instutution stopped by for a tour.

The new building, a four-story structure (95,000 square feet of space), is located at 915 N. Broadway. The Fall term began August 21, 2017. The structure has taken over two years to construct and cost $64.6 million dollars to design and build. The building is projected to house around 1000 students. The building will have classes and programs of WSU-Puget Sound–Everett and EvCC’s University Center offering bachelor’s and master’s degree programs. Everett is WSU’s fifth campus along with Pullman, Spokane, Tri-Cities and Vancouver.

The project has taken years to materialize; stemming from legislation coming out of Olympia beginning in 2005, which paved the way for WSU’s decision to locate in Everett and including a financing mechanism for the structure.

Students will typically enter WSU-Everett with two years of education – Associate of Arts Degree from a community college. WSU calls this a “two plus two” model. The school will offer six degrees: mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, software engineering, data, hospitality business management and integrated strategic communication. In the future, the school is planning to have a program dealing with organic agriculture systems.

This new building establishes a strong, physical identity for WSU in the Puget Sound area and will stimulate more interest for prospective students. The potential increase of an academic population coming into the area could be a catalyst for new economic development in the North Everett area as well as encouraging  a much needed revitalization to this part of town. In the future, we can imagine new types of shops, coffee houses, restaurants and other types of business catering to university students, professors and the myriad types of employment associated with a university town.

In the WSU degree programs at Everett, students will have:

  • Convenience of a campus close to home with affordable tuition
  • Expertise and resources of one of the nation’s top public research universities
  • Businesses throughout the North Puget Sound area employing WSU graduates and actively looking for more
  • Low student to instructional faculty ratio: 15 to 1
  • Diverse community of men and women with a large share being multicultural

Cougar Advantage: Students are mentored by faculty, motivated by high-achieving peers, and supported by Cougs around the world. Once you are a Coug, you will have a network of supporters who will help you land your first job and open career doors.

If you are interested in opening a door to a promising future, pick up your phone and call 360-716-4888 to contact the Higher Education Department for more information or email us at highered@tulaliptribes-nsn.gov.

Eighth Generation Celebrates One Year Anniversary

Louie Gong with hummingbird print.

By Kalvin Valdillez, Tulalip News

In the late summer of 2016, Nooksack artist Louie Gong opened the doors of his ‘Inspired Natives not Native Inspired’ brick and mortar shop in Seattle’s Pike Place Market, located directly above the tourist-favorite gum wall. After several years of independently grinding and selling his traditional yet contemporary artwork online, Louie decided to bring authentic Native American art to the masses by opening Eighth Generation and by doing so, he began to break stereotypes. In a world where big-name companies such as Forever 21, Urban Outfitters and Pendleton often appropriate Native designs, Louie took control by becoming one of the only Native-owned retailers selling authentically made Coast Salish art in the entire nation.

Louie has journeyed a long way since first making his mark in the fashion scene by taking a Sharpie to pair of Vans shoes and mixing traditional and urban art together. Since then, he has used his platform to empower and promote fellow Indigenous artists and has become one of the most prominent voices in the Native American community. Many tribal nations across the United States often gift   wool blankets to community members and leaders during traditional ceremonies. Blanketing honored guests is a tradition in Native America that has been practiced for centuries. These blankets were almost exclusively Pendleton but now tribes have the opportunity to support Louie’s movement during potlatches, powwows and many other tribal events.

On Saturday August 26, Eighth Generation celebrated their one-year anniversary by hosting an open house at their storefront. Tribal members from across the nation, including Ahousaht, Quinault and Lummi attended the event to show support for Louie and Eighth Generation.  The event featured a giveaway of several Eighth Generation products including blankets, soap, a limited number of signed Louie Gong Hummingbird prints as well as an original Louie Gong framed art piece valued at $1,200. During the event, Louie took a moment to reflect on the success of Eighth Generation throughout this past year.

“We’ve been open for a year and I feel like I’m at the end of a marathon,” he expresses. “When we launched it wasn’t time to rest, it was really time to put our nose to the grindstone and work even harder than the time leading up to the launch. Now that we’ve been open for a year and gone through all the different lessons that we had to learn, many of them the hard way, I feel like its finally time to take a deep breath, reflect on what we’ve learned over the last year and recalibrate to do even better next year. I feel like I’ve finally reached a time of reflection so I’m going to take some time away and think about how to move forward in a strategic way and how to continue scaling up Eighth Generation in a way that’s consistent with our values and our long-term vision. Not just creating opportunities for ourselves but also creating opportunities for other cultural artists and other community-based Native people.”

Central District Ice Cream Company  debuted eight new tasty ice cream treats at the celebration.

For the celebration, Eighth Generation collaborated with a local Native-owned business, the Central District Ice Cream Company, to debut eight new tasty ice cream treats: Hummingbird Huckleberry, Seattle Freeze (deep chocolate ice cream with Salish Sea salt and almond cookie crumble), Horchata De La Raza, COOL καψə? (nettle mint ice cream with chocolate chips), Genmaicha, Wunder Beer, Chica Fresca and Sleepy Dragon (lychee and lavender ice cream).  The Eighth Generation team also created artwork for each ice cream flavor.

“There’s no better way for us to celebrate the work that Eighth Generation does than by collaborating with another Native-owned company,” Louie states. “Over the course of last year, we were fortunate to become aware of Central District Ice Cream and the fact that they’re also Native-owned. We teamed up to create eight unique ice cream flavors that we launched today at our one-year celebration. It was the perfect way to act in a way consistent with Coast Salish and Northwest Coast teachings around how to conduct a celebration, but to also do it in a way that reflects the light-heartedness and contemporary nature of Eighth Generation. By incorporating traditional ingredients into the ice cream, including some medicines, it was a way for us to do what I try to do with my art, which is to make cultural teachings and ideas relevant to contemporary life.”

After a successful first year, Eighth Generation continues to inspire Native artists and break stereotypes. For further information and to view the Eighth Generation catalog, please visit www.EighthGeneration.com or visit the store in person at 93 Pike Street Seattle, WA 98101.

Stretching with Seilavena

By Kalvin Valdillez, Tulalip News 

The world today is busy. As a society, many people nationwide tend to prioritize exercise and health last on their daily to-do list. The demands of the workweek leave many feeling stressed, depressed and exhausted. More times than not, good intentions often get pushed aside for convenience. Diseases such as diabetes and high blood pressure are rampant in tribal communities across the nation. Because of the everyday hustle and bustle, people unintentionally neglect to set aside time for themselves, therefore living the majority of their life in a rush causing a disconnect between their mind, body and soul.

Countless studies have shown that individuals are more happy, healthy and heedful when incorporating yoga into their everyday lives. Tulalip community member and Lummi tribal member Seilavena Williams recently began instructing yoga classes at Marysville Spark Hot Yoga. Through her practice, Seilavena experienced the many benefits yoga has to offer and immediately wanted to share her newfound passion with her community. She became a certified Yoga Instructor and started teaching at Spark, guiding yogis through sixty to ninety-minute stretching sessions. Due to the exciting news of her new classes, Seilavena recently sat down with Tulalip News to discuss her personal yoga journey, the many benefits of yoga as well as her Spark Hot Yoga Classes.

Can you begin by talking about your personal journey with yoga – when and how did you become interested in the practice?

2015 is when I started my journey. At first, I tried yoga thinking it was a good work out and just a way to get toned, which it is, but over the years on my journey I learned it is so much more than that. I kind of fell out of the practice in 2016, it was a year that I came across some hard struggles in my life and faced many challenges. I reached a point in my life that I needed to find healthy tools and a new path. Yoga became one of them. I remembered how good I would feel after taking yoga and decided to get back into it with the intention to really dive into the practice. Over time I learned it helps quite my mind, it helps me heal, helps me let go of the things that no longer serve me. It pushed me to work towards the best version of myself not only mentally but physically. It also taught me that self-care is so important to balance out mind, body and spirit. Yoga is the tool for me that inspired me to turn inwards to evolve – meaning always growing, always learning – and definitely has helped me stay healthy.  Yoga is a never-ending journey I am always trying to improve my practice and to be open-minded about learning from others.

What inspired you to become an instructor?

Feeling the benefits and the transformation yoga helped me with, I could not keep it to myself! I wanted to share this! I want everyone to find that path of enlightenment within his or her space and his or her own journey. So if I can help in any way, by holding space and/or by guiding individuals, I wanted to learn how to do that through yoga.

How important is meditation and stretching?

Meditation should be a law! Take five minutes, minimum, a day because It is so beneficial and important. My favorite part is learning to bring your attention to your breath, something we do naturally so you don’t ever really think about it or pay attention to it, but during meditation you take time to control and slowly breathe, which helps tremendously in brining things to a calm state and it also helps with clearing your mind, developing mindfulness and finding your balance to recollect and reenergize.  It can be a challenge to meditate but I think yoga helps. Yoga is like a guided meditation. With each pose, you are focused on that specific pose and taking it to the level you need and concentrating on your breath. Everyone’s style is different that is the beauty, so you get to take it as far or as little as you need it.

Stretching in yoga goes hand and hand with breath and meditation. It draws your attention to your body and deeper into your muscles with concentration on your breath so you do not overdo it. It helps your flexibility and to strengthen your muscles. It helps with alignment and balance.

How can tribal members benefit from yoga?

Yoga is a journey of self-exploration and self-worth because you discover a lot of things about yourself. I think that finding a way back to grounding and balancing yourself is definitely an important thing to do. As Native Americans, we can relate as far as Mother Earth and nature; and recollecting and re-grounding with it, is also a way to rebalance and come together.

What are some of the health benefits of yoga?

I believe the health benefits are endless but to name a few: it helps with joints, certain poses like eagle pose can squeeze fluids in, giving fresh nutrients to your joints. Other poses can help elevate your heart rate, increase your endurance and help with blood flow which gives you fresh oxygen to your cells. Yoga helps with any back pain and improves posture and helps protect your spine. Nevertheless, most importantly it helps with reducing stress, anxiety and brings self-awareness and increased energy.

What style do you teach? What are the other styles?

I mainly teach Hatha, I am certified to teach the other styles as well, such as Yin and Power. Hatha is what I teach right now at Spark Hot Yoga. Hatha is a good class to start with. It consists of twenty-six poses, it can be a sixty-minute or a ninety-minute class and it’s broken down into two categories, a standing series and a floor series, with a warm up and cool down. The focus is compression and extension, movement with breath.

What is your all-time favorite pose?

Dhanurasana-Dancer pose! It’s a love-hate relationship with the pose. It’s a tough one for me, you really have to balance and concentrate but it challenges me every time and I get to push myself somewhere new every time. That feeling of knowing I pushed myself out of my comfort zone is so rewarding, I feel it carries on to other things in my life, so in a way that pose influences me.

Any advice for yogis just getting started?

Yoga is a journey, your own personal journey. It is a practice and you’re always learning something new. No matter how many years someone’s been practicing there is still always something new to learn. I still learn new things all the time from other yogis or instructors. Always be hydrated, drink lots of water, eat a well-balanced diet, go in with no expectations and always have fun!

What happens during a typical Seilavena Williams Spark Hot Yoga class?

I try to make sure that I have good music that fits the mood – to be fun, energizing but also grounding and calming. Through my training, we were taught to teach all levels at all times that way no matter where you are in your practice you get the full benefits. In my warm-ups I try to bring a different pose, so students can learn something new outside of the twenty-six poses in Hatha and with variations as well. Overall, I want you to have fun, challenge yourself and to find one moment where you are able to balance and reconnect with yourself.

What is the most rewarding part about being a yoga instructor? 

I definitely think it is knowing I get to hold space for people to take their journey with yoga.  To take that sixty minutes to guide them into a moment of peace and inspiration. And mainly that I get to help others, it really makes me happy and it feels good to extend that out to people.

Starting September 5, Seilavena’s classes will be held on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7:30 p.m. as well as on Sundays at 10:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. For further details, please contact Seilavena Williams or Marysville Spark Hot Yoga at (360) 386-9271.

Frequent Vibrationz

By Micheal Rios, Tulalip News 

“What are you vibing on?” To 24-year-old tribal member Jack Peterson, this simple question has come to represent his aspirational journey from a wishful teenager growing up in one of Spokane’s poorest neighborhoods to an entrepreneurial twentysomething riding a wave of cannabis legalization.

Born on the Tulalip Reservation, Jack relocated to Spokane when he was only 2-years-old to live with a surrogate family because of his biological parents’ struggle with substance abuse. Considered home to the lower class of Spokane, the Hillyard neighborhood is where he spent most of his formative years being raised by a loving, stable family.

“I got separated from the Tulalip Reservation at such a young age, but I feel like the Tribe has always been there for me offering assistance and support with school and activity costs,” says Jack. “I grew up knowing I was Tulalip, but lacked the appropriate understanding of the culture. I’ve always felt this missed attachment to my homeland, especially with all these questions I had like what kind of people were my biological parents and who my family was on the reservation.”

As a teenager Jack went to Rogers High School where he consistently made honor roll and became an active participant in DECA (a high school student-based organization that prepares emerging leaders and entrepreneurs for careers in marketing, finance, and management). The business concepts and skills he learned in DECA would spark a burning passion to become a manager or owner of his own business one day.

In 2011, after graduating high school, he attended UW Seattle for a year to study pre-Medicine. Although the thought of aiding and possibly curing people’s pains medically meant a lot to him, the pull to the business world was just too strong. So Jack transferred to Eastern University after being accepted into the business program. While attending Eastern as a full-time student, he moonlighted as an assistant for friend’s cannabis grow operation. What started as a side job to make a little extra money for school and pay bills quickly got Jack’s entrepreneurial mind tinkering with all kinds of ideas.

The grow operation was small-scale, only growing about 10 plants or so, but they started growing concentrates and selling them to local medical shops. In the summer of 2015, Washington State legalized cannabis for recreational use and Jack jumped on the opportunity to become a budtender, a person who serves customers at cannabis shops, at a recreational shop called Greenlight.

The knowledge gained from not only growing and selling cannabis, but from interacting with shop owners and large-scale growers became instrumental. With the level of experience he now had and witnessing what was happening in the cannabis industry first-hand, young Jack’s mind turned to grand plans. The experience fueled a now burning passion to open a business of his own, as he foreshadowed a potential boom in the Oregon recreational market.

“Working at the Greenlight shop provided me with so much invaluable experience into the cannabis industry. When news broke that Oregon was getting ready to legalize recreational cannabis I knew that was my best opportunity to open a business of my own while being able to capitalize on a new, growing market,” reflects Jack on a time when Washington State was seeing a lot of competition with so many recreational shops opening their doors.

So in July 2016, Jack and his wife, Courtney Peterson, packed up everything they owned and moved to Eugene, Oregon hoping to pioneer a new market. Riding the cannabis legalization wave meant leaving everything he knew behind, but also meant Jack would have the best opportunity to achieve his long held belief he’d run a business of his own someday.

After months of sheer determination and grinding to find the perfect location to open his business and to raise enough funds to cover start-up operating expenses, Jack and co-owner Brandon opened the doors to Eugene’s first 100% recreational cannabis retail shop on November 11, 2016. Its name: Frequent Vibrationz.

“The meaning of the shop’s name comes from our desire to help you the customer find your good vibe as frequently as possible. Whether your vibe is something more relaxing to help with pain or an illness, or your vibe is something to get you happy and help socialize with friends, we can help you to reach where you want to be,” explains Jack. “Right now our slogan is #VibeOn. It’s something people can wear or say in public that doesn’t scream pot or marijuana, but still connects our customers to us. It’s developed from us saying every time a customer leaves “vibe on!” to customers saying “Hey, vibe on!” when they enter the store.

“It’s something that’s taken on a life of its own now, it describes a lifestyle. #VibeOn is much more than being about just a cannabis product, it’s being active, being a professional, or being a business person and still using cannabis on a daily basis to reach your optimal vibe.”

Over the nine months since it first opened, Frequent Vibrationz has earned a committed and loyal following because of the focus on quality and customer service. With repeat business as a key component to a recreational shop’s long-term success, the “Vibe Guides” at Frequent Vibrationz provide an experience and lifestyle over just selling product.

Amy Lee of stonermag.com states, “Co-owners Jack and Brandon have opened a dispensary that on all level succeeds in bringing their personalized and relationship-driven vision to [the customer]. It’s the knowledge of the staff that really brings people back again and again. The layout of the place is very welcoming. Frequent Vibrationz is a dispensary with no lobby, there’s no waiting and no entering your ID into a database. We loved the convenience of that. Making this a stop in your journey to finding the right Vibez is highly recommended.”

Jack has made it a point to give back to the Eugene community since its home to his dream come true. The staff of Frequent Vibrationz have performed a number of community outreach efforts, including trash clean-up days, holding several charity drives for the local humane society and raising funds for the birds of prey foundation.

The competition continues to grow as more and more recreational shops open in Oregon, but Jack Peterson, the newly minted business owner, has little doubts he has found a winning strategy.

“We are seeing continued growth through the increased competition, and we remain the highest rated dispensary in Eugene based on our Google, Facebook, Weedmaps, and Leafly reviews,” beams Jack at the success he has found and hopes to continue. “We push forward every day with a goal to ensure our return customers are happy and continue to be treated as family. While our new customers are given the whole Frequent Vibrationz experience and welcomed to join the family. I think this unique customer experience is what has separated us from the rest, as well as our philosophy for having the highest quality products at the best prices in town.”

Frequent Vibrationz has not only allowed Jack to fulfill his lifelong ambition of running his own business, but also connects him back to his Freshman year at UW when he was focused on medicine. The list of medical uses for cannabis grows larger every day, as the medical and science community publish more and more articles on the subject. Jack shared that a large portion of his customer base are individuals who use cannabis for a variety of medicinal purposes to increase their quality of life.

“Kind of funny to think that at one time I was attending UW hoping to become a doctor so I could help people medically and now, like a doctor, I’m helping people with the healing power of cannabis,” marvels Jack. “The best example of this is a customer I’ve come to know quite well. She came in one day really interested in CBD tinctures. We sold her one and a couple weeks later she comes back and tells us her story about how she suffers from seizers, up to 6-8 per day. Treating herself with the CBD tincture she went two weeks seizure free. At twenty-eight years-old she has found a much higher quality of life, nearly seizure free with regular use of CBD tinctures. Cannabis has changed her life and it’s amazing to think I played a role in that with my business. Helping individuals manage or treat their medical issues by finding their vibe is a game changer.”

The court of public opinion on cannabis has shifted greatly in just the last couple years alone, with several States in the nation legalizing it recreationally. Referring to cannabis as medicine or a healing flower that is a much safer and natural alternative to pharmaceuticals, such as addictive pain killers, is now common place in many social circles. It’s part of the process to deconstruct the often negative and stereotypical views of cannabis, while empowering those who seek to find their optimal vibe.

To find more information on Jack and his highest rated cannabis store in Eugene, Oregon please visit https://www.frequentvibrationz.com/