Connect Ferndale is a community organization dedicated to anti-racist and community building work that centers connection. Our work is focused on Ferndale and the surrounding area which is the homeland of the Lhaq’temish people, also known as the Lummi Nation, also known as the Salmon People. The Lummi People are the original inhabitants of Washington's northernmost coast and southern British Columbia. They lived in villages throughout this territory and continue to have an ongoing relationship with these areas. Since Time Immemorial they have celebrated life on their land, waterways and on the traditional, ancestral lands of their People to perpetuate their way of life.

We protect and honor the history of these people and places.

In 1855, the Lummi Chief Chow-its-hoot, along with tribal leaders from over 20 Indigenous groups in the region, signed the Treaty of Point Elliott. The treaty forced the Lhaq’temish people from their ancestral land, including the area where the city of Ferndale is located, onto a reservation. The treaty also guaranteed fishing rights, which the United States and Washington State governments intentionally repressed until forced to change by the Boldt Decision in 1975. Additionally, Lhaq’temish children were separated from their families by the residential boarding school system that included the Lummi Residential School, the Stickney Home Mission School in Lynden, and the Catholic Mission Boarding School in Tulalip. We know that these actions- reservations, repression of fishing rights, and residential schools- were and continue to be state-sponsored actions of genocide against the Lhaq’temish people.

This is still and will always be the land of the Lhaq’temish people. We honor the history, culture, and presence of the Lummi Nation, the Salmon People. And we call upon all residents of Ferndale and the surrounding area to hold our governments accountable to the treaty, to learn the history of our area, and to honor the Lhaq’temish people, the original inhabitants of this place we together call home.