By Jonathan L. Gitlin
This is where the world began for my people.
Seattle has a river. It’s named for my people.
This is our place where there is a river.
This is the place given to us by the Great Spirit.
This is our place.
—James Rasmussen, Director, Duwamish Longhouse Cultural Center
The Duwamish people have struggled to maintain their identity ever since their longhouses in early Seattle were torched over a century ago. Their new longhouse, opened January 3, 2009, is a step toward rebuilding their identity as a people with a history. It serves as a tribal headquarters, an educational center, and as meeting, ceremonial, gallery and exhibit space. Built near a debris-choked riverbank alongside the site of a burnt longhouse, the new longhouse provides the Duwamish Tribe, denied federal recognition, a place to emphasize their history and to show their Puget Sound neighbors and visitors that they are a part of the community.
Tribal leader Cecile Hansen speaks at the longhouse ribbon cutting in 2009, welcoming tribal members and the community to the celebration. Photo by Jonathan L. Gitlin.
Celebrating the new longhouse, Duwamish leader Cecile Hansen said, “This is such a glorious moment in our history.” She is a descendant of Chief Si’ahl, after whom Seattle is named. Since Ms. Hansen was elected to the lifetime position of head of the Duwamish Tribal Council in 1975, she has led the dual efforts to build a longhouse and win tribal recognition. She told a radio news reporter that without federal recognition the Duwamish have “nowhere to go, so this is our place.” Remembering her famous ancestor, Hansen said, “I think he would be very proud that he finally has a home next to the river.”
Before leaving office in late December 2001, President Clinton issued a formal recognition of the 600-member Duwamish Tribe. Their tribal status had been denied since the early days of federal Indian governance due to procedural questions about tribal organization in the 1920s. Only a few days after the Clinton administration’s recognition the Duwamish got the bad news that recognition had been overturned by newly inaugurated President Bush, as he tossed out all of Clinton’s final actions in office.
Since then the Duwamish have intensified their fundraising to build a new longhouse as a rallying point for their unrecognized tribe. James Rasmussen, longhouse director and third-generation Duwamish Tribal Council member, told The Seattle Times, “Our longhouses were burned to move Indians out of here. This is an important step to be able to bring our culture and our people together again.”
Support for the $3 million project came from the city of Seattle and King County as well as state and private funds. Perhaps the most memorable funding source was the donor group Coming Full Circle, organized by Amy Johnson, a great-great-granddaughter of one of Seattle’s founders, David Denny. The group gathered donations from descendants of Seattle’s settlers to support the Duwamish Tribe’s longhouse project in an effort to try to right the wrongs done to them since Seattle’s European settlers arrived in 1852.
The Duwamish longhouse sits on the shores of the Duwamish River. Photo by Jonathan L. Gitlin.
Once the Duwamish were recalled as a story out of Seattle’s early history, as the people who welcomed the first settlers arriving in the winter of 1851 on the beach near the Duwamish longhouses. Later the Duwamish were considered a vanished people with a few survivors here and there, blending into the world around them. With their new longhouse the Duwamish now have a tribal identity gained through efforts to build not just a building, but a possibility. They reinterpreted themselves, first to each other as a cohesive people with an ancient tribal identity, and then to their neighbors in the city that they helped establish.
According to University of British Columbia history professor Coll Thrush, “Native people made the town possible.” Amy Johnson said, “Our forefather wouldn’t have survived without their help.” Thrush recounts how the Duwamish “helped the first settlers through a rough winter and then worked alongside them for several years in fisheries as builders, in land clearance, and as mill workers.”
Despite this cooperation Seattle’s pioneers petitioned the federal government in the 1860s in opposition to a Duwamish reservation south of Seattle. Some say they feared the loss of a ready cheap labor force. Others say a coal discovery near the proposed reservation provided impetus for the opposition.
Land promised to the Duwamish in an 1855 treaty was never provided. Thrush tells how the Duwamish, Seattle’s local tribe, faded from their central place in early Seattle as laborers and neighbors. But, he writes, “Though their landscapes disappear, native presence remains.”
In the words of James Rasmussen:
I represent the oldest government in King County.
This is my home.
Generations and generations of people have been here.
I can feel their presence. They are among us.
Our vision of indigenous peoples guides our interpretation, but interpreting indigenous cultures requires listening to their own interpretation. The Duwamish longhouse’s story is more than a historic recount. It is a living statement of presence on the land. The longhouse itself, in its structure, people, and activities, is a living act of interpretation.
The longhouse translates the Duwamish people’s struggle for tribal recognition from a dream to a place where the dream can be realized. The longhouse is a place where the Duwamish can interpret their experience and struggle to the surrounding community.
The Duwamish Longhouse Cultural Center is next to the sites of two burnt longhouses; they were known to their inhabitants as “Where there are Clams” and “Herring House.” Herring House was the last longhouse to burn, in 1893. Some say the arsonist desired the land, across the Duwamish River from downtown Seattle by the riverfront, for real estate development.
The Duwamish River running by the new longhouse is a sacred place for the tribe. A small Seattle city park on the riverfront at the Herring House longhouse site is named “Herring House Park” in memory of the burnt longhouse.
With the new longhouse, the tribe says, they “reclaim space to revitalize [their] culture and preserve our living heritage.” As they approach the longhouse, visitors can see the river and the ancient longhouse sites. As they enter the longhouse, tribal members are in a ceremonial space. Upon entering they say their Indian names and then their ancestors’ names.
The Duwamish want “to be able to tell [their] story to the people who live here to let them know what this place used to look like,” said James Rasmussen. He said to the people of Seattle, “You are the ones that write the history of this area…. It’s up to you to remember the history of the land goes beyond the founding of the city.”
Interpreting indigenous cultures means letting this human resource speak for itself. The Duwamish interpret their tribal experiences to visitors. Their longhouse is a living interpretation of the tribe’s history and status.
To educate the community about their heritage, the longhouse contains the Duwamish archives, displays archaeological materials gathered from the site of the burnt longhouses, and operates a resource center for researchers, students, and teachers. Duwamish language and dance group meetings are held in the 6,000-square-foot building and movies about Duwamish history are shown. Native storytelling and Native hip-hop workshops are held for Indian youth.
The yellow Alaskan cedar post-and-beam structure includes a 2,200-square-foot meeting room with tiered benches to accommodate hundreds of visitors for meetings and cultural events. Yellow cedar that once grew in the Seattle area was a common building material for the Duwamish, but was logged out by the settlers.
A full kitchen in the longhouse provides the Duwamish a resource for fundraising and community building. They hold “Salmon Bake and Fry Bread for Justice” events to raise funds toward their effort for federal recognition. The Duwamish need $128,000 to hire anthropologists to establish before the Bureau of Indian Affairs their continuous tribal status through the years questioned in the 1920s.
The Duwamish were not included in a 1974 federal district court decision awarding 50 percent of the annual Puget Sound salmon harvest to the landed tribes. The 50 percent share was guaranteed by the 1855 treaty but because they had no land of their own, Judge George Boldt ruled that the Duwamish were not a political entity and could not share in the award.
The Boldt decision rallied the national movement toward defining modern Indian identity. However, the Duwamish, who had provided salmon to the newly landed Denny party in the winter of 1851, and whose ancient culture revolved around the gathering and preparing of Puget Sound salmon, received no benefit—they were denied access to their lifeblood.
Fire burnt the Duwamish longhouses over a century ago, but the tribe still longs for official recognition. Today’s new longhouse does not replace the old ones; rather the Duwamish Longhouse Cultural Center embraces the spirit of the generations that came before and those to come. In the words of James Rasmussen:
We are still here.
We did not leave.
We are very proud of that fact.
Our sovereignty is very important to us.
It is not something I can give to you.
It is something you have yourself.
Interpreting indigenous cultures means accepting indigenous peoples as contemporary inhabitants of this land, worthy of respect and consideration. The tribes are more than willing to tell their story, their history, and their experience as a people and on the land. It is up to those who would interpret their message to listen and seek out opportunities to learn more about their Indian neighbors and predecessors.
To interpret Indian culture requires looking at the world through the eyes and experiences of an Indian. Concerned for their cultural survival, the Native Americans see a new people living on the land of their ancestors. Their culture, where it survives and strives for progress, represents an ancient tradition, while their world was made “new” by the European immigrant.
How do you interpret the Indian effort for cultural survival? It is as natural as that of any people in a challenging environment. Resources are sought, defense mechanisms developed and strengthened. And in many cases the drive is weakened or is failing.
An understanding of Native history before Europeans arrived opens the possibility of a richer knowledge of our land’s history, as told by the people who were here. We can be enriched by the cross-cultural exchange that could result from a wider effort to understand and interpret this rich history.
Listen to this ancient human resource. Let the Indians tell the story of their long history of life before and after their world was changed by the new population. To interpret their culture is to know and to tell that story.
Jonathan L. Gitlin has a masters degree in regional planning from Cornell University. He lives in Seattle, where he is building Greenbespoke, a green household goods online store. He can be reached at jonathg@seanet.com. The Duwamish tribe can be found online at www.Duwamish.org.
