Tag Archives: Duwamish Tribe

Voices

OPINION | ‘Deep Respect’: An Urban Indian Response to an Article Seeding Anti-Native Racism

by Atlas Firtree

Recently a friend forwarded me a Seattle Met article titled “The Politics of Paying Real Rent Duwamish” and a subsequent Reddit thread, along with an eye roll. The author successfully dumbed down the extraordinarily complex issue of federal recognition of Native tribes — to some distortion of reality where appropriative white people intend to open a casino in Seattle city limits to steal money away from other tribes in the region. This is unequivocally anti-Native racism.

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Community

How to Celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day in the South End

by Amanda Ong

Indigenous Peoples’ Day is this Monday, Oct. 10, a day to recognize the Indigenous peoples on whose land Seattle was built, and to come together and celebrate them and their cultures. 

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News

Duwamish Tribe Files Lawsuit Against Interior Department in Fight for Federal Recognition

by Alex Garland and Elizabeth Turnbull

As the Duwamish Longhouse and Cultural Center filled with supporters and members of the Duwamish Tribe on Wednesday, May 11, drumming and singing opened the event with ancient songs and sounds that have echoed across the waters of the Puget Sound for thousands of years. 

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Voices

OPINION: It’s 167 Years Past Time to Restore Recognition of the Duwamish Tribe

by The Duwamish Tribal Council

Cecile Hansen (Tribal Council Chair)
Desiree Fagan (Councilmember)
Ken Workman (Councilmember)
James Rasmussen (Councilmember)
John Boddy (Councilmember)
Roger Boddy (Councilmember)
Paul Nelson (Councilmember)
Cindy Williams (Tribal Council Secretary/Treasurer) 
Russell Beard (Councilmember)

For at least 12,000 years, the Duwamish people have been living in what is now called King County. The “People of the Inside” inhabited the lands around Elliott Bay, along the Black, Cedar, and Duwamish Rivers, and around Lake Washington. 

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Voices

OPINION: Spirit Returns 2.0 — Finding Solidarity at the Duwamish Longhouse

by Amanda Ong

“We were second-class citizens in our own land,” my grandfather used to tell me, perhaps the only time I saw him with a hint of a scowl. Our land then was Hong Kong, where Chinese residents were under British control for 100 years. As the original inhabitants of Hong Kong were Punti, Hakka, Tanka, and Hokkien, the island has always been ethnically Chinese. My grandfather seldom spoke about the marginalization my family experienced during their time in Hong Kong as a British colony and when he did, he was brief. When my mother was a child in the 1960s, our family made the decision to leave Hong Kong to be second-class citizens in another land, hoping for something called “opportunity.” 

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Community

Indigenous Voices Across the Americas

by Josie Jensen and Jesús Zamora

The Seattle Globalist was a daily online publication that covered the connections between local and global issues in Seattle. The Emerald is keeping alive its legacy of highlighting our city’s diverse voices by regularly publishing and re-publishing stories aligned with the Globalist’s mission. 

Indigenous peoples around the world have been fighting to protect their ancestral lands, languages, and cultures from being erased by colonialism for generations.

In Seattle, on the unceded territory of the Duwamish, Suquamish, and Tulalip people, there are countless movements for Indigenous liberation past and present. These range from the fish wars of the 1960s and ’70s to the Duwamish fight for federal recognition to movements such as Idle No More and 350 Tacoma that work to protect Indigenous lands from environmental degradation to movements calling for justice for missing and murdered Indigenous women to organizations working to uplift Indigenous artists and preserve Indigenous culture such as the Duwamish Longhouse, Yəhaw̓ Indigenous Creatives Collective, and more. 

Similar work is being done by Indigenous people around the world. I got to witness these similarities in a recent trip to Ecuador where I participated in a program organized by Amigos de Las Americas centering Indigenous rights and food justice.

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Features

Shape Our Water: Magdalena ‘Maggie’ Angel-Cano

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by Ben Adlin

Shape Our Water is a community-centered project from Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) and KVRU 105.7 FM, a hyperlocal low power FM station in South Seattle, to plan the next 50 years of Seattle’s drainage and wastewater systems. Funded by SPU, the project spotlights members of local community-based organizations and asks them to share how water shapes their lives. Our latest conversation is with Maggie Angel-Cano, community engagement and communications specialist for the Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition. 

Growing up in South Park, Maggie Angel-Cano spent years without realizing Seattle’s only river ran through her neighborhood. 

“We had no idea there was a river in the community,” she said. “We just, you know, lived our daily life: work, school, back home.”

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News

West Seattle Bridge Closure Exposes Inequities in Duwamish Valley Communities

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by Bunthay Cheam

On March 23, the City of Seattle closed the West Seattle Bridge due to rapidly expanding cracks that rendered it unsafe for vehicle traffic.

The bridge will be closed until at least 2021 and may not be repairable according to Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) director Sam Zimbabwe. SDOT is still working to assess the full cost and timeline of needed repairs.

The city-owned bridge is vital to people living on the West Seattle peninsula, serving as the main route of access to the rest of the city, serving about 100,000 vehicles per day.

The main detour routes offered by the city take drivers through the Duwamish Valley, and through the communities of Georgetown, South Park and along  West Marginal Way.

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Photo Essay

Welcome the Water Connects Past and Present of the Duwamish River

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by Carolyn Bick

Standing on the Tukwila Community Center’s back patio, Ken Workman squinted a little as he looked towards the Duwamish River. More than two centuries ago, his ancestors looked over the same river, its shape much the same now as it was then.

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Profile

Cecile Hansen and the Interminable Road to Justice for the Duwamish

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by Judy Furlong

Cecile Hansen’s pursuit of justice for the Duwamish people began in 1974. She was a housewife in her early 30s, living in Tukwila and raising three daughters, when her younger brother, Manny Oliver, came by, mad as all get out.

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