A Healing Reprise

By Leilani Polk

Following the events of 9/11, late Upper Skagit elder Vi taqʷšəblu Hilbert was prompted to act. Knowing that the language and culture of her ancestors was imbued with healing powers, she asked the spirit for guidance on how to heal a sick world. She talks about this in the short documentary, The Healing Heart of Lushootseed: “The spirit came back with an answer: ‘Music. Music is the one language that can be understood around the world.’” The documentary — about how Hilbert commissioned a symphonic work and gathered support to get it premiered by the Seattle Symphony in 2006 — will be screened and then a concert reprising the work, The Healing Heart of the First People of This Land, will be performed by the orchestra on Friday, March 7. 

Hilbert was well-respected for her efforts in saving and preserving the Indigenous Lushootseed language, not only by the Skagit people but by all the Lushootseed-speaking tribes in the Puget Sound region. While she didn’t do it single-handedly, her hard work, dedication and untold hours of compiling field notes and transcribing recordings from reel-to-reel tapes over decades is directly reflected in the number of Lushootseed speakers today. They either learned the language from Hilbert directly or learned it from her second or thirdhand, from someone who studied her work, now part of University of Washington’s Special Collections and available through the nonprofit that Hilbert founded in 1983, Lushootseed Research. Granddaughter Jill LaPointe continues her grandmother’s legacy as the Director of Lushootseed Research. According to LaPointe, “She’s highly revered even among the different tribal language programs for the work that she did in making the materials available. And she really worked hard to support the other tribes that were wanting to develop their own language programs.” 

Hilbert was 83 years old when she started her ambitious project to heal a world that had lost its way. While the idea that music can connect people across borders and beliefs isn’t new, using music as a vehicle for healing while merging Indigenous wisdom, culture and inspiration with symphonic instrumentation definitely was. In the film, Vancouver composer Bruce Ruddell relates the story of meeting Hilbert at her home to figure out if he was the right person for her project. After a more than seven-hour conversation, Hilbert was convinced that Ruddell was the composer who should create her Indigenous symphony, and he was convinced to take on the commission.  

She entrusted him with cassette tapes of two songs by her people (Chief Seattle’s “Thunder Song” and a prayer song from her cousin Isadore Tom, aka pətius) to inspire the work, but she had a few very important guidelines: he had to listen to them alone, and he couldn’t use any of the melodies or rhythms. The songs were to be used purely as inspiration. He spent a day listening, and then he began to write. “What he did, it’s really amazing,” said LaPointe. “He was able to capture the spiritual essence of the healing of those two songs and put it into a symphonic composition. And grandma believed that the spirit and energy of her culture was transformed through this music and that it does carry healing power.” 

The symphony incorporates Indigenous percussion and vocal techniques into four movements that tell a story and reflect the culture that inspired them. The first movement, Prepare (marked “expressively-unhurried” at the score’s start), is a prelude of sorts; the quiet preparation for the sacred pieces to come. The second movement, Thunder Spirit Power Song (marked “with movement and a mounting energy”), has an urgent, ascending drive and is named for Chief Seattle, whose thunderous voice could apparently be heard from half a mile away. The third movement, Healing Song, is pure spiritual inspiration from cousin Isadore Tom, tender and honest and simple, with soaring vocals, chiming percussion and a delicate melody amid washes of orchestral color. The fourth and final movement, The Journey Forward (“slowly, with weight”) offers spoken Lushootseed wisdom and hope while musically pondering what’s next.  

With the symphony finished, getting it to the stage was the next challenge. Hilbert didn’t know anyone connected to the Seattle Symphony but happened to start with former Director of Education & Community Programs, Patricia Kim. “Grandma cold called her and said, ‘I have this symphony and I want the Seattle Symphony to perform it and I want [then-Music Director] Gerard Schwarz to conduct it.’”  

Kim became an advocate of the project, bringing it to Schwarz and pushing to have it performed as persistently as Hilbert. At some point, while conducting in Europe, he called Kim, in the middle of the night his time, because he couldn’t get Hilbert out of his head. According to LaPointe, “He said, ‘Tell her I’ll be there, I’ll do it.’ To me that has always been evidence of the energy of the symphony.” 

The world premiere happened during a music festival at Benaroya Hall on May 20, 2006, opening with a blessing song by Johnny Moses before Schwarz conducted the orchestra through the work accompanied by guest mezzo-soprano Jenny Knapp. Moses returns to sing his blessings in the 2025 reprise, with Seattle Symphony Associate Conductor Sunny Xia at the podium joined by soloist and Indigenous soprano Adia tsi sʔuyuʔaɫ Bowen. The performance will also feature the traditional Native instruments that Lushootseed Research commissioned to be loaned for orchestra performances: a large elk-hide hand drum and a smaller deerskin hand drum, a raven rattle and a bear rattle. 

Hilbert passed in 2008, and production of the documentary was put on hold due to budgetary restraints and the exit of the original filmmaker. A renewed interest in the incomplete film was sparked in 2018 after Seattle University built a 10-story building and named it Vi Hilbert Hall, but the next filmmaker wasn’t a good fit. Then the pandemic hit, its political and racial tensions spurring LaPointe to finish the film, “because the world was still in need of healing!” A small group of advisors and a new filmmaker convened to form the Healing Heart Project, all of them significantly connected to Indigenous culture and to Hilbert’s vision. “As though the spirit of the project had been reignited, the fundraising fell into place and donations started rolling in.” 

Western Washington University’s Western Symphony Orchestra presented Healing Heart in 2022, and it was performed again last fall by Vermont’s Windham Philharmonic. Its Seattle reprise finds Healing Heart gaining momentum once again. 

Hilbert believed that if her symphony was going to heal the world, it needed to be heard around the world. The Healing Heart Project seeks to fulfill her wish, and it feels like an appropriate time for it: the world needs healing now more than ever.  

Sunny Xia’s position is generously underwritten as the Douglas F. King Associate Conductor. 

Gerard Schwarz’s position is generously underwritten as the Rebecca & Jack Benaroya Conductor Laureate. 

The Arakawa Foundation proudly supports the Seattle Symphony’s Community Partnerships for Youth and Education. Additional support is provided by Delta Air Lines.