Mary Verner, 49, is executive director of Upper Columbia United Tribes and a member of the Spokane City Council. She has two offices, two e-mail addresses, three work phone numbers and yet, in the middle of all the busyness, she maintains an amazing calm.

Her secret? She takes brief timeouts to walk along the Spokane River. She pauses by the falls in downtown Spokane and reflects on the meaning the river holds for tribal people, and all people, in the Inland Northwest. She recently talked about the river’s past, present and future with editorial board member Rebecca Nappi.

Rebecca Nappi: Describe the first time you saw the Spokane River and your reaction to it.

Mary Verner: I first saw the Spokane River when I moved to the Spokane Indian Reservation, sight unseen, from the U.S. Virgin Islands. I came through the pass, and came through Coeur d’Alene, and at that time you still drove along the lake in Coeur d’Alene — it was before the big freeway — and came across the river at the State Line. I pulled into the rest area and stopped and walked down to the Spokane River.

That confirmed it was not a mistake to move from the Virgin Islands to the Spokane Indian Reservation. So that was my first encounter. It was 1992 and I was moving here to come to work for the Spokane Tribe of Indians.

Q: What did you like about the river?

A: I liked its vibrancy. It’s a very boisterous river, even at low flow, it has a lot of vitality.

Q: Tell us about your background, especially rivers you grew up around.

A: I grew up in the Southeastern United States. The rivers I knew ranged from muddy rivers of South Georgia, which are like molasses, to rivers that were a bit wider, like the Okmulgee River, for example, that were more like large swamps. And I also knew the rivers in the mountains of Appalachia, which were running down mountainsides. But I never knew a river like Spokane that starts at the base of a mountain and runs through a big gorge all the way to the Columbia.

Q: What tribe did you grow up in?

A: My father is Muscogee, also known as the Creek Indians of the Southeast. I’m not enrolled. My dad was.

Q: Do you still feel a connection with the tribes here?

A: I do. The Spokane Tribe and the other tribes I work for have been very inviting to me. They’ve just made me a part of their extended family. I don’t have the appreciation the Spokane people have, because this is where their ancestors grew up and certainly they have a greater infinity for this land. Where I can connect with them is what we share in common, which is a respect for our ancestors. All of us have a respect for where we came from and where we’ll be going.

Q: Why are rivers so important in almost every tribal tradition?

A: They are the source of life. They are large bodies of water and without water, we can’t live. And they support life as well, in the life-giving fish. They refresh the air that we breathe. They give nourishment to the trees and vegetation we rely on for human life.

Q: Have we romanticized the Native tradition around rivers, compared with the reality in history?

A: If by that you mean that we’ve made it more important in our minds to Native people than it is to Native people, then in my experience, no. The Native people I have enjoyed in my lifetime are very sincere in their appreciation of rivers. Not every Native person reveres rivers, just like no other segment of any other population is identical. Native people are not homogeneous, but for the most part, all I’ve ever interacted with have had great respect for rivers.

Q: How do you interact with the river now?

A: It’s my escape. In a very busy life, I escape to the river. I am so pleased that we have the river right here in the middle of the city so all of us can do that within a few minutes walk, be in another world.

Q: Do you walk there for lunch or bike Centennial Trail? How exactly do you access it?

A: I do all of it. I walk through (Riverfront) Park so I can cross the river. I sit on the edge of the river. I bike along the Centennial Trail. I dip my toes in the river. I fish in the river. I enjoy everything about it.

Q: This time of the year the falls are spectacular and will continue to be for a couple more weeks. When you see the falls this time of the year, does it do anything special for you?

A: This tremendous flow during the snow melt humbles me. That’s why I like to pass by through there on a busy work day. It helps put it all in perspective.

Q: Tell us about Upper Columbia United Tribes.

A: This is an organization of five federally recognized tribes. And what they share is this is their homeland, the city of Spokane sits on their homeland and their traditional gathering area at the falls on the Spokane River. Those tribes are the Spokane Tribe, after which our city was named, the Coeur d’Alene, Kalispell, Kootenai and Colville tribes. And the organization was formed in the late 1980s with a broad mission but particularly focused on protection of natural resources.

Q: You’re the executive director. How do you describe your job?

A: An executive director is a term for someone who takes care of all things that need to be taken care of.

Q: Plus, you are on Spokane’s City Council. In a way, you have the equivalent of two full-time jobs, is that safe to say?

A: Yes. They billed the council job as a part-time job, but I think that was false billing.

Q: Was it a hard decision to say yes to the City Council job?

A: Not at all.

Q: And why did you say yes?

A: Two reasons. One, I really wanted to serve my community. The city of Spokane and this community have been very good to me since I’ve been here. And second, the tribes wanted me to. They saw the natural synergy that could be created by having someone who could be a human bridge between cultures and that we could work together on issues as tribal governments and city governments. The river being one of those issues, of course.

Q: In terms of river issues, you often must wear two different hats. Describe how you handle that.

A: I don’t get actively involved with the tribal governments on their efforts to restore the Spokane River. The Coeur d’Alene Tribe has tribal water quality standards. The Spokane Tribe has tribal water quality standards. Both tribes have professional staff who are actively engaged on their behalf. To avoid conflicts of interest, and also to respect the tribes, I don’t get involved on behalf of the tribes. I do get involved on behalf of the city.

I bring with me, in my city engagement, the respect I’ve learned for the Spokane River from the tribes. And I bring the recognition of where the tribes are coming from as they approach the river cleanup and try to add that understanding to the way we approach it at the city.

Q: Characterize the respect for the river that you bring from the tribes to the City Council and the rest of Spokane.

A: It involves recognizing that the river is an irreplaceable resource. It is not put there for our sole use as human beings. It has a purpose greater than ours. Yet it does provide for us and we can use it. We can generate electricity. We can water our parks and lawns. We can, in fact, dilute our pollution using the river, but we have to respect it wasn’t put there just for us.

Q: Is there one river issue you’ve worked on this year that you kept in mind that respect?

A: I’ve been tracking the collaboration process for total maximum daily load (for dissolved oxygen). Editor’s note: The Spokane River TMDL Collaboration is a group of different groups working together to implement a river cleanup plan.

Q: What do you think of the process?

A: It is a good example of how multiple interests can be brought together to identify what their issues and concerns are and to jointly find solutions. It’s an approach we use all the time among our tribes and to see it replicated and used with municipal governments, state and federal government and nongovernmental parties was really rewarding.

Q: Were you one of the city’s official representatives to that collaboration?

A: No, but I wanted to be thoroughly familiar with the process, because I expected a City Council role. Of course, we do hold the purse strings at City Council and I wanted to make sure I understand how we will be spending our money to clean up the river and why we are spending it that way.

Q: What, in your opinion, is the greatest threat to the Spokane River at this time?

A: Financial constraints of the people trying to clean up the pollution. When the pollution that exists today was created, it was during boom times economically for Spokane and Coeur d’Alene and developments in the Spokane Valley. And those sources of revenue are long gone. We have mining, but we no longer have a thriving mining culture here. We don’t have a thriving Kaiser Aluminum facility that we had in those days.

The economic base that was in existence at the time the pollution was created is no longer here to help us pay for the restoration of the river. So we have to come up with other alternatives and yet not shirk our duty just because it’s expensive. So I see financial constraints as being our biggest barrier. There is a great desire to do what we need to do. Polls have been taken in our community. People clearly want the river cleaned up. Paying for it is the big obstacle.

Q: You have a master’s degree from Yale in environmental studies and a law degree from Gonzaga. How do you use both or either of those degrees in your approach to river issues?

A: Both of those degrees give me the academic background to understand the different worlds I find myself in, as we discuss the river. They also exposed me to different outlooks. I went to graduate school in an urban city on the East Coast and I went to law school at a Catholic university here in the city of Spokane and had already had other life experiences that brought to me a desire to listen to other people’s perspectives. When I combine that with the academic training to understand the science and the law around the discussions, it really helps to give me a 360 degree perspective on what’s going on with the river.

Q: The photos that have become iconic show the tribes down by the river holding up huge salmon. Why is it so important for us to have those photos in our history?

A: The photos depicting tribal fisherpeople, mostly men, at the Spokane falls, are important today because they remind us that this river is a source of life and has been for thousands and thousands of years. While it has supported a different kind of economy in modern times, if it’s not alive enough to support a fishery, then it eventually won’t support our economy and therefore won’t support our life. Those fish that are depicted in those photos were the basis for the regional tribal economy. And so when we think it’s an economic center today, we forget that it has been an economic center in a tribal way for thousands of years, because tribes came together, they exchanged fish for buffalo and bartered camas for sweet grass or something like that. So this has been a trade area for Native people long before it became a place of trade for non-Native people.

The fish are there to remind us of all that and to help us to hold onto those values. The tribes I work for are actively engaged in bringing the salmon back. It’s not a pipe dream. It’s happening. The Colville tribes have a hatchery at the base of Chief Joseph Dam. And we are working on feasibility studies about how to get them past Grand Coulee. And when they get past Grand Coulee, the Spokane River is one of their tributaries. So it’s going to be happening. Maybe my grandchildren will catch a salmon.

Q: The salmon aren’t here now, so is the river still as important to the tribes as it once was?

A: It’s absolutely still as important. For the last three days I have been going out to meetings in the Valley. There is a quarterly conference of the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians. It happens to be in the Valley now. It rotates around the region. If you have the opportunity to attend some of these tribal meetings, take advantage of that opportunity. All the meetings open with prayer about the salmon and the water and the health and well-being of the people and the air and the land and the trees. So yes, Native people drive cars and live in houses and eat at McDonald’s, just like the rest of us, but the rivers are still sacred ground.

Q: And you really think your grandchildren will see salmon in the Spokane River?

A: I’m working on that.

Q: Paint the fantasy of what that will look like.

A: It’s going to take long enough that my grandchildren will probably have children of their own. This isn’t going to happen overnight. But I envision them being down below the falls, with that wonderful fresh cold spray on their faces, feeling the power of the river and anticipating that fish and what it’s going to taste like and thinking about to whom they are going to offer the gift of the salmon they catch. I think they’ll be happy.

Q: Anything you would like to add?

A: I did want to say with regard to how we use the river. Advances in our knowledge and technology allow us to continue to use the river in economic ways without causing damage to it. I hope we can encourage economic developments around cleanup technologies. We are growing our economy in the biosciences with a medical angle. And we’re trying to grow our university district, so I’d love to see if we could meld onto that a piece that focuses on the economy surrounding environmental cleanup. We certainly have the laboratory.