BJ Cummings—researcher, community organizer, and author of The River That Made Seattle: A Human and Natural History of the Duwamish—was the second person to hold the Soundkeeper position at Puget Soundkeeper.
Cummings was hired for the position after founding Soundkeeper Ken Moser left the organization to bring his expertise to aspiring West Coast Waterkeepers. She spoke with Puget Soundkeeper about her commitment to the Duwamish River and its potential as an urban waterway. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Puget Soundkeeper: How did you find your way to Puget Soundkeeper?
BJ Cummings: As I finished up my graduate work in Belize, I was interested in not just being a scientist but also crafting solutions. My work focused on what I then called the intersection of the environment and human rights—now we use the term environmental justice.
It became clear to me that I couldn’t be a responsible field ecologist and have blinders on to the social context around me. It was not my role or my right to craft solutions for places that weren’t ‘mine.’ I had to figure out where home was. I had ties here and I came to Seattle. The first job I got was with Puget Soundkeeper as the volunteer coordinator, and I was very quickly drawn to our river.
PSK: I’ve been reading through some of Soundkeeper’s archives, and I see that the Duwamish River becomes more of a focus in the 1990s. Do you think your interest influenced the direction of the organization?
BJC: I’ve been working on the Duwamish since 1994, and one of my main jobs at Soundkeeper was to train volunteer kayakers. Before I had even been there a year, Ken (Moser) left the organization and I became the Soundkeeper. The Duwamish was one of my weekly patrol routes.
Puget Soundkeeper was a small organization at the time, and the Duwamish was easy pickings because none of the industry was complying with its permits. It was so easy to find pollution violations—the absolute nuts and bolts of the Clean Water Act. Soundkeeper had focused on high-profile cases, and I did work outside the Duwamish as well, but a lot of my time was spent going along the river and trying to get all the industries permitted and in compliance.
PSK: How did that extensive time on the water change your perspective regarding protecting the river?
BJC: The Clean Water Act lawsuits and the confluence of people working together for the river, like James Rassmussen, John Beal, and later the Duwamish River Community Coalition (DRCC), were foundational to what we can do today. In those early years, going out with small groups was essential for building people’s relationships with Seattle’s river. The industrial wall was so impenetrable from land. You couldn’t even find the river, though DRCC eventually published a map as a wayfinding tool.
We couldn’t expect people to get behind us if they didn’t have a meaningful relationship with the river. That’s true for any place. Build a connection to create momentum for environmental protection.
PSK: Did it change you as a person?
BJC: I really fell in love with the river as I got to know it. The hours and hours of paddling cemented my relationship with the water through up close and personal experiences. I hope that we instilled the same in the kayakers we trained. We wanted to reinvigorate on-the-water use of the river during those years.
PSK: Do you feel that you found your home here, with the Duwamish River and the Puget Sound watershed?
BJC: I feel like I’ve found my work home. Calling this place home, and what that means for me, has changed over the years. I have a much deeper understanding now of what it means to be a settler here. At the same time, I’m in a relationship with both the Indigenous stewards of the river and the first-generation, non-Indigenous stewards.
I’ve come to understand that even here, I’m still a little bit “other.” But the intentional partnership between Indigenous and immigrant activists bringing this river back to life is so powerful. Working in that allyship and partnership is very much my work home.