We acknowledge that the lands on which this project took place are the appropriated homelands of Indigenous Peoples. The northwest corner of the colonial state of Washington, as most of North America, has been home to people displaced and oppressed my European colonizers. Eight tribes and their ancestors have lived upon the Olympic Peninsula for thousands of years. We want to express our deepest respect to those peoples past, present, and future, including the Hoh Tribe, Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, Makah Indian Tribe, Quileute Indian Tribe, Quinault Indian Nation, Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe and the Skokomish Indian Tribe, for their care of these lands throughout the generations.
In an effort to protect their people, culture, and way of life, from further harms of colonization, leaders of these sovereign nations ceded large portions of their ancestral homelands to the United States government in a series of treaties in 1854 through 1856. In 2008 the eight tribes entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with the US National Park Services to establish a framework for cooperative government‐to‐government relationships to promote collaboration in the protection, use, and conservation of natural and cultural resources for the benefit of the present and future generations, among other goals.
Let us learn more about the histories, cultures, and traditions of Indigenous Peoples. Let us strengthen relationships with sovereign tribal nations to work toward solutions to mitigate climate change and its effects on our ecosystem, cultures, and economies.
