There they stood on sites that dated back to the ancient times: dozens upon dozens of longhouses of the Duwamish people, on the shores of the Duwamish River, Lake Union, Lake Washington. Then, in 1851, the European settlers arrived. And one by one, as the settlers expanded their hold over the land, the area's longhouses were set on fire. By 1894, the last had been burned to the ground.
For the Duwamish -- whose name means "People of the Inside" -- the loss of their longhouses amounted to the destruction of their cultural, educational, and business centers. For more than a hundred years, the loss stripped them of any tribal gathering place.
But come this Jan. 3, 2009, the People of the Inside will have cause to celebrate. That's when the ribbon will be cut on the Duwamish Cultural Center. And when its doors open, all people will be able to step inside the area's first longhouse in more than a century.
James Rasmussen, seated on a cedar plank bench inside the almost completed longhouse, looks forward to that moment. As director of the cultural center, Rasmussen, 53, has spent nearly every day for the past few months on W. Marginal Way, watching the structure take shape. And now, as he gazes at the Puget Salish-style interior --?the old-growth yellow cedar posts that hold up the roof, the planks shingled on the inner walls, the strips of stained wood on the floor that evoke a woven basket -- his eyes dampen with ready-to-spill-over tears. This place, he says, represents a connection with the ancestors. "For me and for a lot of our tribal members," he says, "they get very emotional around it. It's..." The deep timbre of his voice wavers as he does his best to blink back the wet.
Yet the longhouse's completion stands as more than an ancestral connection. It symbolizes an ongoing dual battle for the tribe, one economic and the other cultural.
The Duwamish broke ground on the longhouse in 2003 and, since then, the tribe has struggled to raise the $3 million needed for the project. Donors -- including some with such familiar names as Bill Gates and Paul Allen -- contributed to the effort and, as a proposed Nov. 2008 opening loomed, it seemed the center might reach its deadline. Then construction hit a snag. "We got into an issue with the street," says Rasmussen. An issue brought about by a utility pole.
Rasmussen says original architectural plans called for moving the pole, until Seattle Public Utilities informed him the pole carried power to a portion of West Seattle. In order to keep the lights burning for their neighbors, the cultural center had to reconfigure the sidewalk and driveway. Then an unexpected drainage improvement demanded attention, bleeding away their contingency budget. "It was another $30,000 to $40,000 that we weren't expecting to spend," he says. Not only did the center have to cut back on a few dreamed-of longhouse architectural elements, the center had to bump back its opening to the new year.
But those complications, while frustrating, prove minor compared to the tribe's fight for federal recognition, which began in 1979. In early 2001, it seemed its dream would be realized when the Clinton administration granted the tribe federal status. But months later, after President Bush had taken office, the decision was reversed. And in an instant, the Duwamish were dealt a serious blow: removal of recognition meant they'd be denied assistance for education, housing, and health care.
Tribal chair Cecile Hansen sees the denial of recognition as the major struggle for the Duwamish, one the tribe -- which claims 600 members -- shouldn't have to take part in. "It's getting to me, the injustice for this tribe," says Hansen. "Why do Indian people have to prove who they are?"
The new longhouse, she believes, is a way for the tribe to put itself back on the map, a map that has the left the tribe without its own land since 1855. That was the year famed Duwamish leader Chief Si'ahl (it sounds like
"Seattle"), along with leaders from other tribes, signed the Point Elliott Treaty. The treaty guaranteed fishing and hunting rights to all signing tribes, along with space for reservations. All the Duwamish had to do was relinquish more than 54,000 acres of land.
Not long after being signed, settlers broke the treaty, leading to the "Indian War," where tribes rebelled. By the time the war ended in 1858, the tribes were still without their promised land. While some of the tribal signatories -- the Snohomish, Snoqualmie, and Skagit, for instance, as part of the Tulalip tribes -- were eventually granted reservation land, the Duwamish still do without.
Hansen says the cultural center -- set near the Duwamish River, right across the street from the ancestral tribal village of Ha-AH-Poos -- sits on a parcel no bigger than an acre. In order to build on the land, the tribe had to buy it, a necessity that frustrates Hansen. "That's kind of pathetic," she says. "You have to buy back the land."
Yet even as she feels that some have tried to erase Duwamish history, she sees the longhouse as a great accomplishment. "The history of this tribe is kind of sad," she admits, "but we're uplifted by this [longhouse] finally being built."
And Rasmussen feels the uplift as well. For years, tribal surveys have found a majority of members wanting some sort of museum, he says, a place where they could gather. Over the course of 25 years, different opportunities for a space never came to fruition. But within weeks, that will change. "This is a sacred place for us, but it's not something that we don't want to share," he says. "We want people to come, we want people to enjoy, we want people to use it."
To that end, the center will play host to an ongoing speakers' series and film series, as well as an exhibit space. Opening the center to all people, even those who don't claim tribal ancestry, merely continues the tradition of the tribe, he says. "The Duwamish people have always been known as an incredibly generous people."
And yes, he knows that, when you look back on his tribe's history, you could argue that was probably a great mistake, helping settlers survive who would eventually take Duwamish land. But Rasmussen believes that when Chief Si'ahl signed the 1855 treaty, assuming his people would have their own reservation, he did it trying to find good fortune for his people. "Hopefully, that's the better part of humanity," he says, "that we all keep trying."