The Tribe That Would Not Die
After a century and a half of diaspora, Chief Seattle's people have one last chance to reclaim their rights—and prove they exist.
Anthropologists and historians have widely criticized federal acknowledgment procedures as both vulnerable to political pressure and unfair to Native American groups that don’t fit the stock definition of an Indian tribe. Officials “exploit weaknesses in the written record to justify the decision they have already made,” says Southern Utah University historian Mark Edwin Miller, author of Forgotten Tribes: Unrecognized Indians and the Federal Acknowledgment Process. “Native American groups from urban areas without a land base who intermarried with Anglo—Americans have a very difficult time getting recognized. The killer for groups is if members ever got together for a land claim.”
Filing such a claim, as the Duwamish did in 1925, brands a native group as greedy and inauthentic—essentially fortune seekers—in federal eyes. The only way to shed the stigma is in court. “You have to get in front of a judge because if you stay in the system the government will do whatever it damn well pleases,” says Russel Barsh, a former attorney for the Samish Indian Nation and the director of its Center for the Study of Coast Salish Environments. “They are the judge, jury, and executioner.”
While the Duwamish prepared for a courtroom showdown, their long-held dream of building a longhouse began taking shape. In 2000 they scraped together enough money to buy a tiny, bramble-tangled parcel in the industrial corridor along West Marginal Way. Still they lacked the $3 million needed for the longhouse. Then, in 2005—by chance, at about the same time Ken Hansen bequeathed the Duwamish the legal firepower they needed—Amy Johnson and half a dozen other descendants of Seattle’s early pioneers stepped forward to recompense Chief Seattle’s people for the gifts that saved their ancestors 160 years ago. They helped the Duwamish devise a marketing plan for the longhouse, file grant applications, and organize a series of events at the Museum of History and Industry to raise money and awareness. “This is about friendship through the ages, the friendship between the first pioneers and the Duwamish,” says Johnson. “The circle has come back together.”
On a snow-heavy day last December, tribal members from around the state braved icy roads to join Hansen and her people in inaugurating the Duwamish Longhouse and Cultural Center. The 6,000-square-foot building was finished in gleaming Alaskan yellow cedar. Inside its vast meeting hall, thousands of end-grain fir, cedar, and hemlock blocks inlaid in the floor formed a star flanked by the Olympic and Cascade mountains, representing the meaning of the name Duwamish: “the people of the inside.” Dressed in cedar-bark vests and hats, red capes, colorful blankets, and other tribal regalia, the People of the Inside and their guests gathered around the center of the floor. There the renowned shaman Johnny Moses, who is part Duwamish, stood alone, summoning the spirits in a mixture of English and native Lushootseed. As he finished, the crowd began chanting and beating buckskin drums painted with bright insignias. Moses performed the blessing ritual. The voices grew louder. He danced slowly around the hall sprinkling eagle feathers, a gesture of high respect.
Tears welled up in Hansen’s eyes, but one overriding fact tempered her joy. “Seattle’s indigenous people are still unacknowledged!” she announced, interrupting the celebration. Hansen hopes the longhouse will help remedy that situation. Part meeting space and part public presentation, it provides a place for today’s 600 or so Duwamish tribes-people to come together, to make decisions, and to document their heritage. “We no longer have to continuously remind people that we are still here. This place does that for us.”
Chief Seattle’s great-great-grandniece has completed half the mission she set for herself more than three decades ago. But that brings little satisfaction. “What have I done? Do we have recognition? No! Until that happens my work isn’t finished.” Lengthy litigation lies ahead, and perhaps a bruising cycle of appeals. But Cecile Hansen refuses to consider the possibility that the Duwamish will never regain the rights guaranteed by the Treaty of Point Elliott. “I truly believe that it is the will of our creator for our acknowledgment to be restored,” she says softly but firmly. “I just pray it happens during my lifetime.”
Published: March 2009
