Importance of Indigenization

Expanding on the importance of land requires a look into the history of the campus's construction. The University was created to educate the rising number of students in Washington territory and later state. The current campus for the University of Washington was secured via land donations in 1893 and funded using the common school fund, which allocated funds for the construction of educational facilities in newly established territories and states. The university was able to occupy these lands due to the displacement of Duwamish people from their native lands, beginning with the signing of the point-no-point treaty and continuing with the Town of Seattle Ordinance #5, which banned all indigenous people from residing within the city unless employed and housed by a white settler. With the expulsion of the Duwamish people from their land, the new settlers went on to augment the landscape with the intent of creating a grand location to showcase the cultural aspects of the growing territory. 

In the early days of UW, much work was done to clear the landscape and make way for the new campus. The site was cleared of its native trees and underbrush and re-planted with ornamental species, both native and foreign. Further changes were brought with the construction of the Montlake cut, which drained wetlands and lowered Lake Washington by 9 feet. The leftover soil was then used to fill exposed marshes to make them fit for construction. This included the modern-day locations of Husky Stadium and the Intramural Activities Building.

Although the space has undergone physical changes, it remains Duwamish land. Construction of the campus has physically changed the landscape, but Duwamish history and culture remain seeded in the ground itself. As place names reside in collective memory and the Duwamish people live on, this campus cannot become detached from its indigenous roots. Indigeneity is interwoven into the land and perseveres despite and because of changes. Every part of UW’s history is indigenous history because we are on their land, which was inhabited for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans. 

Decolonizing and Re-Indigenizing

Moving forward to the future of the campus, the inclusion of indigenous presence into the fabric of the university’s culture, curriculum, and place must occur to rectify the deeply embedded mistreatment of the Duwamish and re-instate indigenous ownership of land. This requires doing more than land acknowledgments; it also involves weaving indigeneity into campus spaces, including place names, curriculum, and meaningful inclusion of indigenous voices. Furthermore, the inclusion of indigenous voices must highlight respect and reciprocity. Incorporating Indigeneity into the fabric of UW requires the university to be ready to implement the tribes' demands and compensate them for their knowledge. The University must be willing to assert these demands above donors' wishes as well. UW makes decisions that will grant them funding as a corporation, but as an institution of higher learning placed on native land, it has an obligation to the Duwamish people who came first. 

Today, many are unaware of the campus’s history. Old homesteads, villages, and trails are concealed by power plants, engineering buildings, California sequoias, and more. Furthermore, programs at the university that center on indigeneity are habitually underfunded and overlooked.  Honoring the land where we reside as a vessel for culture and knowledge leads to the sense that every story on this land is an indigenous history. Therefore, through indigenizing space, we indigenize our understanding of the world.

This article aims to highlight Indigenous scholars on campus, using voice to color in the story of UW, both past and present.

CANOE FAMILY BLOG POST:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/12SNReI_raCN-nuAryt8qukaQ_aVlHVm_coeprgK-15Y/edit?usp=sharing

What was the process of building CAIIS like?

Dennison: What was really powerful about this moment is that it was something that no one had, like, a really clear vision of what this needed to be. And so we got to really decide for ourselves what we wanted to do with this. And we spent a lot of time in this process trying to figure out, you know, what does our community really want, and what does it really need? And so I began by taking our Native faculty out to lunch. I'm a huge believer that everything we do needs to be around food, So food is a really fundamental part.

And it was a really big testament to our Native community here, that their overall response, to this was not, you know, I need this research thing, or I wanna be supported with my book project or, you know, any of that, although, you know, some of that came up. But that the overarching narrative that came out of these meetings with Native faculty is that staying for me to stay at UW, what I want it to be like here is a space, where Native students can thrive, where Native community feels welcome, where Native knowledge is valued. And so those became some of the founding missions of what the center was going to be. But I also had some conversations that first year with several of our Native alumni and Native leaders in the area, some of which are both Native alumni and, like, Native leaders in the area. And I talked to them about their time at UW.

And a lot of what they would say is, I just got through. I talked to them about what they wanted to see with UW. And I heard again and again, especially from Native leaders in the area, that they didn't need to be researched, or that was not the primary need that they saw, but they wanted to make sure that the students that they sent to UW were cared for. And they saw— all of this community saw— a lot of needs on our campus, additional aspects of who and what we were going to be. And so we've really come together as an organization that is here to build community on campus, and a community specifically for Native faculty, staff, and students, that centers Native knowledge and does that in relationship with Native communities.

How was CAIIS funding raised?

Dennison: So we’re really thinking about how we do all of the work that we need to do here at the University of Washington in a way that really values Native knowledge and Native community building. And I like this, that the vision is to create a University of Washington that recognizes, values, and strengthens American Indian, Alaska Native, and other Indigenous intellectual traditions, communities, and futures. I think that that's a good statement of clarity of who we are. So that first year, in addition to those lunches and meetings going to ATNI, the Associated Tribes of Northwest Indians, and talking with the Native American advisory board for OMAD, and other steps that we did, we got approached by the Mellon Foundation, which is a humanities based foundation that does really cool programming work to try to diversify college campuses. And they were interested in supporting our work.

And so we were able to use the kind of momentum that we had started around these conversations to host three workshops with different constituencies, to really dream up what programming would look like across campus if it was to kind of be robustly supported. And the Mellon Foundation had originally invited us to apply for a $1,000,000 grant that would be spread out over 4 years, and this is actually roughly the amount of money we had. We had roughly $1,000,000 committed from the university, from the deans and the provost office and various places across all three campuses. And so we started having conversations with people about what kind of program they wanted to see.

And it became really clear as we were doing this work that even with another $1,000,000 from the Mellon Foundation, it was not going to be enough to support the kind of robust work that we needed, that people were asking for here on campus. And so we went back to the Mellon Foundation and said that we weren't interested in applying for $1,000,000, but that we would be interested in applying for a $1,800,000 grant. And they actually, to their credit, said yes, that they would support us in doing that work, which was really cool. And so, you can see here, and I'll take you through the different programs that have come out of those planning initiatives and that we've been enacting since roughly 2019.

Native Pathways Program

Dennison: The first is a Native pathways program. So this is partnership work that we're doing to help transfer students who are typically at 2 year colleges transferred to the University of Washington. So we've done a couple of different projects with this. We've hosted a fellowship so that one of our current or former Native grad students can teach at Seattle Central College. We've also done work with the American Indian Studies department to support more classes being offered in American Indian Studies that transfer directly to UW. And then we've got continuing work that we're gonna be doing this summer that's about making transfer pathways more clear for Native students. So because we have a huge number of Native students that go to 2 year colleges and some that make the transfer leap, but not nearly as many as initially go. 

Dennison: We have a couple of other programs that are offered specifically over the summer. One is the Summer Institute For Indigenous Humanities. This was actually just advertised for this summer. It's going to be led by Jessica Bissett Perea, who is a new faculty member in American Indian Studies, as well as Polly Olsen, who works at the Burke Museum. And the two of them are going to be leading a two week weaving workshop where they're going to be bringing in different Native weavers to teach the students that are accepted into the program Native weaving, and to think about what this teaches us about Indigenous research methodologies. And so this is a cool program that's designed to spur interest in undergraduate students in Indigenous research and Indigenous humanities research specifically, but to not do it in the kind of extractive way that research is often talked about and done. And so, to instead really think about what it means to do this in community engaged and collaborative ways and to do it based in practice. We're really excited about this. It includes a stipend for the students that are involved. And it's a really fun program. 

Summer Institute on Global Indigeneities

Dennison: Sort of similarly, there's a one week workshop— or summer institute— on global indigeneities. And this is actually a partnership that happens between the University of Washington, UBC, and some other institutions across the United States that brings together different Native graduate students and thinks about Indigenous methodologies and how they impact graduate school.

What work is being done at UW Tacoma?

Dennison: We've been getting a good amount of work going at the University of Washington at Tacoma, including the Native Family Lunch, which is a program that we do where we bring—we did on the Seattle campus as well—where just once a month, we invite Native faculty, staff, and students to all come together and eat lunch together. But they also have, on the Tacoma campus, a graduate teaching fellowship. They're working really directly on this pathways program and Native knowledge lecture grants, I can talk a little bit about that later. So we have various programs that we're operating, there, on the Tacoma campus. 

Native Organization of Indigenous Scholars

Dennison: One of the other programs that we support is a Native Organization of Indigenous Scholars, which is a group of graduate students, kind of like the equivalent of First Nations—but for graduate students— to come together and support each other, and just to think about what it is that they need to create community. Because a lot of the graduate students— almost all the grad students— are the only or one of just a couple Native grad students in their entire program, which can be really alienating, especially because so often we run into the same kinds of problems with, you're the only person in your cohort who is interested in doing this kind of research, or people expect you to connect them with their Native resources rather than you being the one supported.

There's just typical kinds of things that graduate students run into. And so this is a really great space where graduate students can come together and share strategies. Anytime we host speakers on campus or do other kinds of things that are of interest to this group, we'll have a special coffee hour that's just with, NOIS graduate students

American Indian and Indigenous Scholars(AIIS)

Dennison: AIIS Scholars—we actually just had this program today—is a workshop for faculty and graduate students to come together and share a research project that they're working on, and to really think about Indigenous methodologies and Indigenous theory, to create a space where we get to think about that across campus for these events. Our canoe family, this is actually our newest program. It grew out of our Native Knowledge in Residence program last year.

This was —it's Philip Red Eagle, who was our Native Knowledge in Residence coordinator— both last year and the year before. He has helped us, along with the awesome support of Marilyn Oliver Bard through the donation of her canoe—the Willapa Spirit—which was an honor canoe for her father. And we've been able to create a really powerful example. To think about it as one of our knowledge families, I think, is probably the best method. 

This is a really important program that brings together Native faculty, staff, and students to think about research collectively as a unit. And so for folks in the sciences, some of the core aspects of this aren't that innovative, right? In the sciences, you often have kind of like a lab where you all come together and you do research together. In the humanities, this is something that almost never happens.

It's very, very rare. And, in fact, most people find in research that it's much more about the individual and sort of individual brilliance and these other kinds of things. And so this is more of an innovative model in the humanities than it would be in the sciences. But, of course, it's also doing it in a way that centers Indigenous knowledges and Indigenous community experts, to think about, what are the kinds of research questions that need to be asked and how it is that we do research, and even what research looks like.

Again, thinking about research as, or these knowledge families as, doing really powerful projects. I don't know if you guys have seen outside the Burke Museum, there's these beautiful camas baskets that are woven. And the camas baskets are woven so as to keep— this is in the meadow, the Burke meadow. And this is to keep the rabbits from eating all of the camas, right?

And so they had originally thought okay, let's weave something as a fence, and then they were like, no. No. That's not the right metaphor. What we really want to do is more of a basket metaphor of protecting these resources. It's a really cool program of stuff that they've done. And it's really about connecting undergraduate students with Native knowledge mentors. And, again, just changing and shifting what research methods can look like here on campus. 

The lecture grants is kind of like a more intense version of that because it's basically like you're doing that, but you're doing it specifically for a full class. And so some of the classes that we've offered are Introduction to Canoe Journeys. It's being taught by Nigel Lawrence right now. But we've done quite a few other ones, there's a really great astronomy class that's going on right now that's super cool that is about Native Hawaiian use of stars for navigation. And it's just very different than anything that's ever been taught here in astronomy before, right? So this is a way to sort of infiltrate Indigenous knowledge and Indigenous community experts into units across campus that they might not otherwise be in.

Qacagʷac Awards

Dennison: Finally, and this is the last thing that we do right now, is our Qacagʷac award. This is a flexible award that can be used by Native faculty, staff, or students to help them thrive in their career. Faculty have used this to support publications of books, graduate students have used this to support doing their research so that they can complete their dissertations, undergraduates have used this to be able to go to conferences and to present stuff.

It can be used in a broad host of ways. And the main difference between the Qacagʷac awards and Native knowledge is that for Qacagʷac, it's really sort of about your individual and your career, is kind of how you have to sort of talk about why this is important for you, versus Native Knowledge is much more about, how is this important for the community as a whole? 

This year, we've really spent more time clearly incorporating ourselves within the College of Arts and Sciences. I couldn't imagine a more supportive leadership for the kind of work that we've been doing. She's been just absolutely amazing in terms of connecting us with our fundraising folks and helping us and supporting us financially. I think almost half of our funding from the university comes from the college itself, and it supports our program manager currently and all of this other work. And I think that that buy-in and that connection point is absolutely essential because we are doing a lot of work that I think the university should be doing, right? I think that the university should be committed to doing this kind of work, and they really clearly are, and that's really cool.

There's so much happening. And I will say, I couldn't possibly do CAIIS work if we didn't have a robust American Indian Studies department. And then these works  feed into each other in really cool ways. I'll give you an example— the NUW Scholars program, the last two years, you know, because I'm helping to host it, I get to know a lot of the students over that one week orientation. And then a lot of them enrolled in mass together in my intro to American Indian Studies class. And then one of the things I've done in that class is, I've created a separate section that is for AIS majors and minors, and I also allow Native students into that section.

It's basically just anybody that has a strong background in Native studies so that they're not in a section with people that are legitimately like, I really didn't know that Native Peoples existed, right? And the vast majority of the folks enrolling in American Indian Studies classes might not be quite at that level, but are at a really intro level, and they need really intro content and conversations and to process all of that. But for Native students or folks, that doesn't help you in life to hear that from people, like, that doesn't feel good. That's not something that you want to hear or to be involved in. And so it's been really powerful to create a separate discussion section, where we're having much more advanced conversations. And in fact, most of the conversations are more like, how has colonialism directly impacted my life? What is my community doing to challenge these forces? What is my community doing to embrace our cultural traditions? We're able to have really powerful conversations in those sections.

That has been really fun, and so the piece of this that is really cool in terms of how these two things work together is that then I have Native students who have already built community together, coming together in their very first quarter. They already have community, and they come together in a class and continue that community in a way that, not only they're caring for each other, but really me. This is actually faculty retention work, because that kind of community is what keeps me here wanting to do this work. It's what makes it possible for me to do this work, because it becomes a space of care not only for them, but also for myself. 

Dennison: Other units on campus, I mean, the Intellectual House, of course, there's important work that they're doing, And I would definitely encourage you to talk with Chenoa directly about some of her visions of what she's getting ready to do. I was just talking with her on Friday and there's some really cool projects that she has in the works that are gonna be mentor programs for Native students, connecting them with Native community members, specifically alumni, to do mentorship programs.

She's also gonna be doing an end of the year thing for a lot of the Native RSOs, so that it can be about, what does it mean to take leadership in an RSO and to support some of the transition work that happens at the end of each year, so that there isn't such a gap in a lot of the RSOs in the next year as new people take on leadership roles. And then there's been, especially with Phase Two, there's a lot of exciting ideas and potential of what all that space can be. 

From wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ: wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ – Intellectual House is a longhouse-style facility on the UW Seattle campus. It provides a multi-service learning and gathering space for American Indian and Alaska Native students, faculty and staff, as well as others from various cultures and communities to come together in a welcoming environment to share knowledge. When it opened its doors for the first time in 2015, the Intellectual House made history. The building was the culmination of a decades-long dream to create a gathering place in honor of our region’s First Nations. An iconic structure on the University of Washington campus, the Intellectual House has been home to many tribal summits and events, and it has been the site of many other university and community events. Now, it is time to complete Phase 2 by adding spaces specifically for students. Phase 2 will require a collaboration among tribes, businesses, individuals and the University.

Indigenous Wellness Research Institute

Michelle Johnson-Jennings & Tessa Evans-Campbell

Co-Directors, Indigenous Wellness Research Institute

Dennison: The Indigenous Wellness Research Institute is in the School of Social Work, and they have— don't know how much programming and kind of stuff that they do—but they certainly do a lot of research and get folks involved in really powerful community based research around wellness.

From the IWRI: Our mission is to support the inherent rights of Indigenous peoples to achieve full and complete health and wellness by collaborating in decolonizing research and knowledge building and sharing.

“It really was the product of a lot longer legacy of work that folks here in the Law School had done. There were professors here—Ralph Johnson was one, Bill Rogers was another, and others, too—who were doing work with Tribes, with Tribal folks in the 60s and 70s, and Ralph Johnson in particular, he tells a story about how one day he came back to his office at the Law School, and there were a bunch of Native folks kind of standing around his office; And they said, look, we need your help because we have these treaties and we want them to be enforced, and so he talked to them for a while and then ended up working on some of the treaty litigation that became the major treaty cases here both in Oregon and Washington. And he did a bunch of research and writing about that stuff, a lot of that work was happening in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s.”

Ralph W. Johnson was a groundbreaking legal advocate and professor who developed and taught the first Native law class in the United States at the University of Washington, and introduced Native law to the Harvard Law curriculum during his time as a visiting professor. Johnson was an instrumental figure in the infamous 1974 Boldt Decision, a Washington State case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit which upheld Tribal Nations’ rights to 50% of the fish catch. This decision was a major win for Tribal sovereignty efforts, and was supported by Johnson through his public advocacy for the Tribes. His work was so influential, in fact, that Judge Boldt cited Johnson’s article “A United States Supreme Court Error” in his decision, aligning with Johnson’s arguments that the U.S. Supreme Court case Puyallup Tribe v. Department of Game vindicated the off-reservation treaty fishing rights of Puget Sound tribes. Shortly after writing his decision, Judge Boldt wrote a note to Professor Johnson, saying, "I want to express my personal appreciation to you for the fine Law Review Article you published on Indian fishing rights in the Washington Law Review. It was a great help in providing me with a useful framework for an analysis.” Johnson’s legacy remains in the amazing work of the NALC, and in the work of Johnson’s alumni advocating for Tribal clients and legislation. 

“The idea of the center was to have a kind of coming together— like a focal point for a lot of that work that was already happening. So the center was started in the late 90s, early 2000s, and the mission was really to continue to do that work in service to Tribal Nations and individual Tribal people, but also to provide educational opportunities for students, particularly connecting students with that service and to sort of be a resource for broader public education about Tribal sovereignty, about Tribal issues as well as a home and support for native students and other students interested in the field, but particularly Native students here at the law school and across campus.”

When asked about the attitude of the University of Washington as a whole towards the NALC, and support received by the School of Law, Mills responded…

“I think partly because it's been such a foundational part of the school and is so long standing it's been identified as a pillar of the school. I've been here just about two years and the reason I came was that sort of legacy and reputation. And it was identified by the faculty and across the university, too, that when the prior director left—he'd been here a long time, couple of decades—there's a need to kind of refocus on and support the center coming back. I think that's an indication of support both by the school and the university at large, that they want to move this into the future and continue to support the center. I mean, there's always—I'm sure any director of any center anywhere on campus would tell you—there's always a need for more, right, we could always support more, more promotion, whatever cause. So, always more room for support, but I think particularly the law school and the university more broadly has recognized the importance of the center and been supportive.”

The NALC continues to support Tribal Nations and individuals through advocacy, education, and representation. The NALC is one of the few major programs in the United States offering an Indigenous Rights Track in both its Master of Laws (LL.M.) and Master of Jurisprudence (M.J.) programs. The NALC also hosts a Tribal Court Clinic in partnership with the Tulalip Tribes to allow law students to gain experience and serve as the primary public defender in criminal cases filed in the Tulalip Tribal Court. Another major part of the NALC is the annual Indian Law Symposium, an event which began in 1987 and is one of the largest annual two-day symposiums focusing on natural resource law, economic development, health, Tribal courts, gaming, and other topics. The NALC also boasts a number of other programs and projects like the Clinic Trip to Navajo Nation and Acoma Pueblo, Native Nations and the Energy Transition, and Empowering the Original Stewards (in conjunction with the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development).

Owen Oliver

Owen Oliver (Quinault Indian Nation and Isleta Pueblo), influenced our project this quarter when he laid some of the groundwork for our studies with his Indigenous Walking Tour. A walk that takes you across seven locations on the UW campus which include the Burke Museum, wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ (Intellectual House), the Medicinal Herb Garden, the Ethnic Cultural Center, the Husky Union Building, and Union Bay Natural Area. His work takes you back in time to see the land as it was before settlers from the west arrived. In our search to understand the history and significance of the land that UW was built on we were inspired by the beauty of his words and vision. Unfortunately a timing conflict prevented an interview with him, but we wanted to recognize and make note of his incredible work during his time on campus. 

He comes from a line of people who have worked hard to make a difference at UW and increase the visibility of the history of the land we walk on every day during our time at this university. His father is an emeritus professor of American Indian Studies at UW and his grandfather was instrumental in founding the Indian student program and the canoe journey. Owen has made an impact in his own right with the walking tour. He shares personal stories and insights into the way the land ought to be seen. He paints a picture of what the land looked like centuries ago and the people who thrived on it. 

We want to acknowledge Mr Oliver and thank him for the amazing work he has done. It is still impacting students years after he graduated and will continue to do so for generations to come.

If you want to learn more about Owen Oliver and take the tour virtually, please visit his website here.

Questions for Interviewees

General:

Tell us about _

What motivated you to do that?

What hurdles did you overcome?

What is left to do?

What are you working on now?

How can we support you?

Specific:

Charlotte Cote

Deborah Lekanoff

Rosalee Fish

Jean Denison

What does CAIIS do for Indigenous students/faculty on campus? What does your day to day look like?

Why is it important that CAIIS exists on campus?

What can you tell us about the Intellectual House? In what ways do CAIIS and Intellectual House intersect?

How supported do you feel by the university in your work?

In what ways can all students and faculty support the work you're doing with CAIIS?

What other resources on campus do you feel would be important for us to highlight?

Is there anyone else you have in mind we should talk to for our project?

Nigel Lawrence

What is the Canoe Journey and Canoe Family? 

What does it mean to you to have this community on campus?

What do you teach about in your canoe journey class? What are some of the primary themes covered?

If you know, what was it like working with the university to establish the Canoe Family on campus? Do you feel supported by the school in this? - ask about AIS grant and recent funding

What might the condemning of the shell house mean for the canoe journey at present?

Who else should we talk to?

intro?

Introduction to project, and laying out importance

The University of Washingotn's campus has made it onto the liosts of num

To Do List Complete by Monday:

• Figure out budget for interviews

• (declined) Email Owen Oliver (Burke) - Laura 

• Email Charlotte Cote (Intellectual House) - Kara

• Email Deborah Lekanoff (Political Science Building) - Claire

• Email Rosalee Fish (Track Field) - Audrey

• Email Jean Denison (AIS) - Claire--Interview 5/6 at 2pm

• Write a list of questions - everyone

• Interviews via zoom - everyone

• Figure out canoe family, who to reach out to - Kara

• Tell interviewees we need to do this on Monday and Tuesday and only need 5 minutes of video, send questions in advance

• write a brief bio and how to support them

If interviews don't work out:

• Write about the people we want to interview and what they are doing and why it's influential (becomes a written piece)

• Distributed by assigned names

• Write bio and how it is linked to what we are doing - Owen Oliver - Laura