 East of us is Noquamie, to the south of us is Kuala, to the west of us is Suquamish, and to the north of us is Suquamish. And you'll find all of our village sites in here, even into Vashon Island, basically Western King County. This is how our people travel. We are Canoe culture, that is who we are. You know, in the plains you have people that have horse cultures, which is very recent for them in their history, but still they have horse cultures. We are Canoe cultures, and it is a very important part of everything that the tribe used to do, and when getting back to those things more and more, it was a very important person. She's been our chairperson for over 30 years now, and it's not unusual within the tribe to have a chairperson for a very long period of time. And she established Duwamish Tribal Services, which is the nonprofit arm of the Duwamish tribe, enabling us to get grants from the federal government. It was something that was very important to us in the time when we were kind of struggling. And she came in with very strong leadership and has been so ever since. One of the things about this that shows Duwamish today, it shows our dance group, some of our Mary Lou and Michael, and some of our artists that we have, some of our children, an annual meeting that we have, and a canoe gathering that happened not too long ago, in 2002, that actually happened across the street over here as well. And this important part about this is that it takes a cheek to move, starting in 1840 with Seattle. And as you see the dates, there is no break. What happens is that you have from 1896 to 1925 two cheeks, and then we go in from 1915 to 1947 with a chairperson. In other words, the change from the chiefdom to Robert's Rules of Order, constitution, and those things. And we're probably the first tribe in western Washington to have a modern constitution. And there's no break to Cecilia Hansen today. This is what we've been trying to do. We're trying to build a longhouse, our first home since 1894, to have a place in the community, to let everybody know that we do have a history. These are Chief Seattle's people, and they even named a city about from our chief. So, you know, and as I say, we're still here. And now we have a home. This gets very emotional for me because it's tough to realize that we've been treated so badly and we're persistent to change what has happened to this tribe. If you don't fight for your rights, you might as well just go home and have tea. Well, welcome to the longhouse. This is a very sacred place for us. Longhouses always were a very sacred place. There's always were winter village sites for tribal people. This is a post and beam structure, but you also find the posts along the wall that were the same thing that they used to use to tie the wall up with. We have an incredibly marvelous floor. The design is laid out in three different kinds of wood, Douglas fir, hemlock, and cedar. All very important to us. And the design itself has two mountain ranges on either side, and then a star in the middle signifies the tribe. We are between two mountain ranges, the Olympics and the Cascades. We are the people of the inside. The floor tells that story. And that's the first thing that you see, the first people of Seattle. It's a very important statement, something that's very important to say to people as they walk in here. One of the things that Cecil has said over the years, and we've all talked about over the years, that we are still here. Because a lot of people forget that or choose to forget that or never knew that in the first place. So it's important that this place become a place where we can almost like something to stand on top of and shout from that we are still here. And this welcomes you. It's an important thing for us. Everybody is welcome. And the descendants of Chief Seattle, the leader revered throughout the world is Chief Seattle. We're the first people of Seattle, Mercer Island, Renton, Bellevue, Kirkland, Tukwila, and other parts of the county. We've never left our ancestral homeland. Real strong statements. We carry the strengths of our cultures, teachings and traditions into the 21st century. These panels, and this one in particular, talks to traditions, the traditions of the Darmish tribe. They talk about Chief Seattle once again. We talk about how we used to fish, and that's not something that we used, but fish reels were something that we used, and they're very important to us. Again, the canoe, how we traveled, and also longhouses. And one of the things that's important about looking at this is a picture of a village site here. And in the village site you will find, this is actually a post and beam structure still, but then you'll also find on the outside these things that are not really holding up the road. You'll find the same thing on the outside of our longhouses. What they did was, that was how they lashed the cedar panels or the cedar plants to the wood. That held the wood on the side of the house. And then a post and beam structure to hold it to it. That's exactly what the longhouses are. Important thing to have at the entrance of a longhouse. And Michael had just carved this piece. Oh, less than a year ago. And it's called Keeper of the Song. And you'll find dots all over this piece. All signifying songs, especially around his head. And the one thing that's very interesting about this welcome figure, it is not just a front welcome figure, but around back you'll also find the designs on the back as well. So it's important to be able to display the piece so that you can see both sides of the piece. Usually a welcome figure stands against a wall and welcomes you like that. And this figure is actually something that's a very special figure carved by Michael. And Michael's Duwamish Carver. His mother's Mary Lou Slaughter. And she also has her baskets here for the opening of the longhouse. We have an archeological site which we actually have some of the pieces on exhibit here. And some of the dating in that archeological site right across the street over here goes back to 300 B.C. So just in... And these are not extensive excavations. These were done over a couple of years. Panstakingly done as they're done. But there is still stuff left in the ground over there and we know that. And so the important thing about that is that one of the things that my mother used to talk about is when the Egyptians were building pyramids. Duwamish people were here. This is Princess Angeline. Princess Angeline is incredibly important to Duwamish people. She was the daughter of Chief Seattle, the namesake of the city of Seattle. And the important thing about Angeline was that even though she had the opportunity to go anywhere she really wished to, being a high-born Duwamish person and a high-born native person in Puget Sound, she chose to live here. She did not leave Seattle. She's buried here in Seattle right next to Henry Esler and all the important pioneers in the very Ritzy graveyard up on Queen Anne Hill. A high-profile woman during the turn of the century that refused to leave here even though there was a lot of persecution, even though she was honored by a lot of people. She was also harassed a lot by tons of people and she did not deter her. She did not leave. And why? It's because this is her home. We're getting ready for Mary Lou's show and this is some of her basket work. She's a master basket maker. I'm really proud to have her as our first artist that we show on our gallery, part of that. You see all the baskets laid out. I'm kind of just going through and got to look at them and figure out where's the best place to put some of these. These represent not only traditional design but how they're made, traditionally, from traditional things. You will find this and as we go through the exhibits you'll find old baskets that are almost identical to the ones that she's made. So, yes, they're traditional in a lot of different ways. Every basket maker is going to make a basket slightly different from another one. In other words, I think you find that in New Mexico a very popular pottery that comes from tribes in the Southwest that, you know, there'd be traditional designs and those two designs are going to be the same. The real tight woven baskets and I don't think Mary Lou brought any of those with her today but the real tight woven and we have one old one are cooking baskets. And, you know, they didn't go on top of a fire or anything like that. What happened, the way our people used to cook in baskets were that they were very tightly woven baskets. And so that they would actually hold water and then you would put in what you're cooking and then the heated rocks from the fire would go into the baskets and that's what cooked your food. Obviously, other things were cooked on the fire as well but cooking in baskets was something that our people had been doing for thousands of years. We had to get in the process of acknowledgement which started out officially in 1978. So 1978 up to 2001 we felt that we had proven our case which is we are the indigenous people of Seattle. They termed, well, you know, they signed a treaty but they were supposed to go to reservations and they didn't go. Well, our people especially lived along the rivers and Puget Sound here and the lakes and they were just fine but the pioneers didn't want them so they pushed them out and made them go and burned down their house and there was a little prejudice there existing between the pioneers and they were good for cheap labor though. I mean, they were needed but once the work was over they had to get out of town. You have to remember that in the 60s and prior to quite honestly there was no no rights to speak up for Indian people. Treaty rights were something that were not even thought of and in the 60s with younger people coming into tribes not just here but across the country people started thinking about wait a second, we have a treaty what does that treaty actually mean reading that treaty and understanding what that treaty means and so in the 60s you had a struggle in this part of the country about fishing because what was in the treaty said that native people and everyone else we had in-kind fishing rights well, the judge finally decided what that means in-kind means and that was a huge decision a valuable decision for native people and it was something that really changed the landscape as far as native people we talked about then we were talking about the 1970s late 60s and early 70s and all of a sudden there was a viable resource because salmon were you could make money fishing not as easy anymore as it was then because salmon relative to a price per pound is not as expensive as it was then this possession talks to the treaty the moving of Duwamish people trying to push us out of this area the importance for us for the treaty is to make sure that people understand that the Duwamish tribe is a treaty-signing tribe quite honestly the first tribe of the signature on the Point LAF treaty is the Duwamish tribe so it is not like we do not have the treaty backing us and all of the other things backing who we are we do we try to show that here and also showing kind of the change and the more migrant status of native people living in tents instead of living in longhouses how they traditionally live and so this is at the end of Bell Street I believe after their longhouses were burned they did not have much choice so they had to live somehow someplace Indian people, Duwamish people kept coming back to this place they pushed out and they come back pushed out and come back the Duwamish tribe believes with new administration the doors are going to open for Native Americans especially for restoration of treaty rights under the previous administration in 2001 we had worked over almost 20 years on recognition and when the new administration came in in 2001 it took away our status they gave it it was given by the Clinton administration and then 48 hours after the new administration came in which was the Bush administration it was put on hold and it was taken away well I'm serving right now as a tribal council member secretary for tribal council I got elected in March it's my second time being elected to council I've always served since I was little I was on youth councils a Duwamish tribal youth council the North Kitsap High School youth council and for us that was an opportunity to serve one of the things some of the things we did were to go out and chop wood for elders to mow their lawns and all that stuff what does a community need cleanups or this or that to be a member is to serve to I guess I want to go back to chiefs what we consider a chief was somebody who would be called the poorest person in the tribe because they went around and took care of everybody they gave the stuff, the shirt off their own back to somebody who needed them more they went around and just took care of people and so when the settlers came and needed a leadership person to talk to they were used to seeing an executive person who decides and makes, you know, plans and does all these things, executes orders and that's not what we have we have somebody who takes care of everybody one could argue that's what executives should be doing too is taking care of people they just have a different way of doing it but I like that idea that a leader is a chief is the poorest person in the tribe because they're helping the most people to give away everything you have being a wealthiest person we bought land near waterfront and we're planning to put houses there for tribal members and we're actually sued by a local organization or they tried everything they could to stop us from building homes there having Indian neighbors would decrease their property value that they actually went to pictures of the worst tribal housing they could find and we don't want to live next to them and of course our answer is why did you move to a reservation if you don't want to live next to Indians they were going door to door knocking people's houses to gain support for not letting the Indians move in down the street from them and one of the doors they knocked on turned out to be who didn't know any of us at all Sarah Van Gelder editor-in-chief executive editor I'm not sure of yes magazine and she lives down there on the waterfront by the waterfront and they knocked on her door and described this horrible situation and so we joined us to you know stop the tribe and she was no why would I want to do that that sounds like something that they should be able to do and she started organizing to help us out she organized local people that lived here that were not tribal members they were the residents of Suquamish and created this Suquamish Olala Neighbors Association my mom was there Ted George was there and Benny Armstrong was there as members to help with this and they became some of our best allies because they would go and testify about why it's okay having the insolvency store organize all these different events let's go back to Governor Stevens Governor Stevens was told to come out here and to bring settlers out here but to bring settlers out from the east coast he was directed I guess by the president to sign treaties with the Native Americans or the Indians of Pioneers so when he came out here in the Puget Sound one of the treaties was coined earlier Suquamish tribe was the first signature of this treaty which we gave up 54,000 acres which is Seattle they said we would have education we would get housing we would get money and they would pay hopefully for the longhouses that they burned down and we signed the treaty in 1855 I think it was in January by our chief chief Sealth and his sub-chiefs and languished in nothing and we didn't get anything and when we sued and then we were we followed suit once and they threw it out and then they sued it in that suit languished in court for 40 years which they settled in 1960 and then they had to decide who were the Duwamish people so from the middle of 1960 to 1971 they got the roles of who determined who wanted to be Duwamish and they settled with the tribe and of course they paid off the attorney which was little or nothing and each member who was determined to be Duwamish got $64 for this city of Seattle we talk about the struggle of the tribe talking about one of our chiefs chief Henry Moses from Renton very important he was basically named Moses by people who knew him settlers who knew him because his people were struggling and so they gave him the title of Moses as the story out of the Bible and you find other pictures of different ways that people survived and an important photograph of a high-stakes gambling game one of the last ones to happen in Renton and it actually was written up in their newspaper in Renton of this terrible noise that was coming from the north part or by Lake Washington for days and days which was a sing-gambel that went on in Renton and it was one of the last ones that happened hosted by the Snowfall and Duwamish but to have a photograph from that is very valuable to us Duwamish tribe being a tribe that has been a turn of the century dealing with treaty issues we're the first tribe to actually go after the money that was promised to us in 1855 the court of claims case was led by the Duwamish tribe and our attorneys went all the way through Puget Sound talking to other tribes about you're part of the Point Elliott Treaty and in that Point Elliott Treaty it says you were supposed to be paid for your lands and you ask them the question have you been paid for your lands and no, they hadn't this goes it starts in the 1920s continues into the 30s 40s, 50s finally in 1962 the United States court of claims basically said yes we should pay you now what we got was the value of the land in 1855 no interest paid nothing about all of our longhouses that were destroyed nothing for all the other things that were gone but just the price of the land in 1855 I think Cecile talks about it is that we're not about groceries because that's just about as much as it was the money that we got but the point is that we did get something we won that battle when we talk about federal recognition it is a series of battles a long battle and it's also about quite honestly the law of the land the treaty ratified by Congress is the law of the land one of the promises that were made to Duwamish people and Indian people throughout this country is that we are people that live by laws and that those laws govern us join us so that you will be part of this society that these laws will affect you as well and well they really didn't have much choice but they did and they signed those treaties with those promises well those promises have not been fulfilled and that is where we are today is trying to get a promise fulfilled and it's much more than just a promise this is a document that was signed by a governor ratified by Congress you would think that that would hold some weight we are waterfront people we lived on the waterfront when the tide goes out the table is set we lived with the wood store back the front door is the Puget Sound our crews are the driveway and that's where we lived that's where we went from and now we can't even afford to live on the waterfront even on our own reservation we are pushed back uphill in the woods out of the water and there's one little park we wanted to have the Suquamashalala Neighbors Association come and because it's one thing for us to testify about why it's important to us but it was even better to have our allies non-tribal members come and talk about it and counter everything that the other organization was saying and so we got the park back and we got to build our houses with their help and Chief Seattle's Tombstone they were able to help organize funds to find somebody that could donate their time to fix it and put it back together it was that, I'm sorry, it was vandalized because of all this other stuff with the land that was like somebody's anger outburst to get back in the tribe for this other stuff and we have these allies that stepped up and helped us take care of it so our hope, I mean just like the rest of the country everybody's been swept up in hope and what of it how do we live to the best of ourselves who are we how can we make this world a better place how can we make just our little corner of the world a better place and one of the things that I think we can quite honestly say that with the advent of the Longhouse and Cultural Center that it will make the city of Seattle the Northwest a much richer place to know a history of this area to know a history of this city that most people don't know of if you move into an old house and a city is like an old house it's important to know the history of that house it's important to know who's lived there before what's happened in this house and one of the things that we want to do here at the Longhouse and Cultural Center is to tell people the history of our home it's really hard to take that you had something once in a treaty and never fulfilled and then given it again and having it taken back there's an old term it's called Indian Giver and that's where those type of terms come from it is not Indian giving it is how people give to Indians Indian Giver that's what that means