Press release from Brett McFarland:

165 years after the brutal February 26, 1860, massacre of Wiyot men, women, and children on Tuluwat Island and neighboring villages, a new song emerges, inspired by Wiyot Tribal member Alan Miller Coonskin’s family history and his work to help his people heal.

As the program director for a recovery house in Bear River, Alan helps Indigenous community members coming out of prison and rehab heal from their trauma and prepare to return home in a good way. Confronting the impacts of multigenerational trauma in his community is no easy task, but that’s exactly what Alan has dedicated his life to.

If you saw Brett McFarland’s music video for the song Humboldt, you may have noticed Alan and some of the men from the recovery house standing with their eel hooks. It was during the filming of that video that Brett first learned details of Alan’s family history.

“When we were shooting the Humboldt video, sometimes we’d spend an entire day just to get a few seconds of footage,” Brett recalls. “But since we had the camera rolling, we started interviewing the people we were filming about their experiences living in Humboldt. We heard so many interesting and touching stories, but what we heard from some of the Indigenous community members hit me so deeply that I still lie awake at night thinking about them.”

When Brett asked Alan how he felt about living in Humboldt, Alan responded, “This is my home. My family’s home.” Then, visibly emotional, Alan recounted how his great-great-grandmother, Zowishwish, swam from Tuluwat Island eight months pregnant the night of the massacre. He explained that he is only here today because of the strength of the women on both sides of his family. He also shared how his grandmother Evelyn had told him firsthand about life in the boarding schools.

“When I listened to Alan tell his story,” Brett says, “it turned a tragic historical event into something deeply personal.”

These stories gave Brett chills, and shortly after, he reached out to Chuck Petty, Executive Director of the Humboldt Historical Society, to ask if they had a copy of Bret Harte’s 1860 newspaper article reporting on the massacre.

“I had hoped to include a picture of the article in the Humboldt music video,” Brett reveals. “But Chuck told me they didn’t have it. ‘No problem,’ I said. ‘Any old antique newspaper article on the massacre could work.’ But Chuck told me they didn’t have that either. He said,
‘No such articles exist. After they ran old Bret Harte out of town, they pretty well buried it. It wasn’t until about 20 years ago that it started surfacing in the news again.’”

“Hearing Chuck say that blew me away. That’s when I knew I had to write a song about it.”

Brett’s newest song, “Street Signs,” was inspired by these stories that came up during the making of the video for Humboldt. It aims to help the community heal by bringing not just awareness but also an emotional connection to the tragedy. The song also shines a light on people like Alan, who work tirelessly to honor both the living and the dead through service to their community.


PREVIOUS BRETT: