Seattle

Colleen Echohawk, a Native American woman and key advocate in Seattle’s homelessness crisis, is running for mayor of the Pacific north-west city and laying the groundwork for it to potentially elect its first indigenous mayor.Echohawk, an enrolled member of the Kithehaki Band of the Pawnee Nation and a member of the Upper Athabascan people of Mentasta Lake, is a progressive Democrat, but one, she said, “with strong roots in pragmatism”.Her success in the race would be truly distinctive. It would mean the city that over 150 years ago approved an ordinance expelling the Native community, would be run by an Indigenous woman.As the founder of the Coalition to End Urban Indigenous Homelessness, she said she launched her campaign after recognizing over the summer that the city needed to do much more to help its homeless population amid the Covid-19 pandemic.“The status quo has been failing a lot of people in this city and we have to find ways to change, we need a fresh face up there in city hall and a prudent person who can make decisive visionary decisions because this is really a once in a generational chance,” said Echohawk, speaking to the Guardian from her campaign headquarters in the basement of her house.Echohawk is not Coast Salish, but she has lived in Seattle for 24 years. And before she announced her candidacy, she said she called the leaders of a few of the region’s tribes – Muckleshoot Indian Tribe, Suquamish Tribe and Tulalip Tribes – to let them know she was considering a run.“This is their territory and I will continue to lift them up in every way that I possibly can,” said Echohawk, who since 2013 has been the executive director of the Chief Seattle Club, a non-profit aimed at supporting the city’s Native American and Alaska Native residents, through food, housing assistance and healthcare.Echohawk is one of only a few people who has announced her candidacy after Jenny Durkan, Seattle’s mayor, revealed she would not seek a second term. But others are expected to join the race before the May filing deadline.Addressing homelessness, which has been at crisis-levels in Seattle for years, will be a key focus for Echohawk. She said she will look to ramp up affordable housing and permanent supportive housing. But she also hopes to employ more innovative ideas, while bringing together people of color, some of whom have been pushed out of the city because of soaring prices, to help develop alternative affordable housing solutions.The city’s police system is another important issue for Echohawk. At a time of nationwide reckoning over police violence and as some in the local community are calling to defund the police department altogether, she said she was prepared to start reimagining law enforcement in Seattle.She explained she has seen some great officers in the city. But added: “I’ve also seen some who have been completely brutal to some of my relatives out there experiencing homelessness. That means we have to have accountability, true accountability.”A revamp would probably involve removing some funds from the agency, and establishing a public safety department filled with mental health workers and neighborhood liaisons who could address mental health and homelessness issues. It would also mean taking law enforcement out of homeless encampment outreach.“A person who’s experiencing homelessness already has so much trauma and pain going on and then all of a sudden they’re expected to interact and try to get services from a uniformed police officer? It’s just not effective,” she said.Echohawk would also like to create an elder leadership group that, if she’s elected, she would be able to meet with every couple of weeks in an effort to receive feedback on her ideas.“That’s the traditional value that I’ll bring that other mayors might not bring because I’ve been taught to value and listen to elders and to hear from their wisdom,” she said.Echohawk’s own ancestors have been on her mind a lot since making the decision to run. She’s descended from the Pawnee people, who saw their numbers violently and dramatically reduced in the face of white expansion in the 19th century.“They suffered and they worked so hard so that I could be doing this work that I am right now,” she said. “And I hope that they’re really proud of me. I feel that they’re proud of me. I feel them with me.”This article was amended on 3 February 2021 to clarify that Echohawk is executive director, not founder, of Chief Seattle Club. More