Red Eagle Soaring Native American Theatre Group presents Coyote was Going There Native Youth Performance
The premiere performance of an original play created by students and
teaching artist Jake Hart (Blackfeet/Cherokee) in Red Eagle Soaring’s Fifth
Annual Spring Performance Project
The event is FREE & Open to the public – FREEWILL donations will be requested.
Rainier Valley Cultural Center
3515 S Alaska St, Seattle map
(206) 725-7517
Parade, Frogtastic Kids Fair, airplane rides, music, games, food, beer gardens,wine tasting, custom classic car show, river run and championship BBQ cook off!
For 100 years, families have gathered in the historic district of Snohomish for the annual Kla Ha Ya Days. The native word Kla Ha Ya means welcome and we welcome you to experience old fashioned summertime fun and enjoy our town.
Peter Mauney Jeffrey Gibson in his studio in Hudson, N.Y., with his dog, Stein-Olaf.
By Carol Kino, The New York Times
HUDSON, N.Y. — One sunny afternoon early this month Jeffrey Gibson paced around his studio, trying to keep track of which of his artworks was going where.
Luminous geometric abstractions, meticulously painted on deer hide, that hung in one room were about to be picked up for an art fair. In another sat Mr. Gibson’s outsize rendition of a parfleche trunk, a traditional American Indian rawhide carrying case, covered with Malevich-like shapes, which would be shipped to New York for a solo exhibition at the National Academy Museum. Two Delaunay-esque abstractions made with acrylic on unstretched elk hides had already been sent to a museum in Ottawa, but the air was still suffused with the incense-like fragrance of the smoke used to color the skins.
“If you’d told me five years ago that this was where my work was going to lead,” said Mr. Gibson, gesturing to other pieces, including two beaded punching bags and a cluster of painted drums, “I never would have believed it.” Now 41, he is a member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and half-Cherokee. But for years, he said, he resisted the impulse to quote traditional Indian art, just as he had rejected the pressure he’d felt in art school to make work that reflected his so-called identity.
“The way we describe identity here is so reductive,” Mr. Gibson said. “It never bleeds into seeing you as a more multifaceted person.” But now “I’m finally at the point where I can feel comfortable being your introduction” to American Indian culture, he added. “It’s just a huge acceptance of self.”
Judging from Mr. Gibson’s growing number of exhibitions, self-acceptance has done his work a lot of good. In addition to the National Academy exhibition, “Said the Pigeon to the Squirrel,” which opens Thursday and runs through Sept. 8, his pieces can be seen in four other places.
“Love Song,” Mr. Gibson’s first solo museum show, opened this month at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, with 20 silk-screened paintings, a video and two sculptures, one of which strings together seven painted drums. The smoked elk hide paintings are now on view in “Sakahàn,” a huge group exhibition of international indigenous art that opened last Friday at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. And an installation of shield-shaped wall hangings, made from painted hides and tepee poles, is at the Cornell Fine Arts Museum at Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla.
Mr. Gibson also has work in a group exhibition at the Wilmer Jennings Gallery at Kenkeleba, a longtime East Village multicultural showcase through June 2. Called “The Old Becomes the New,” it explores the relationship between New York’s contemporary American Indian artists and postwar abstractionists like Robert Rauschenberg and Leon Polk Smith who were influenced by traditional Indian art. Mr. Gibson’s contribution is two cinder blocks wrapped in rawhide and painted with superimposed rectangles of color, creating a surprisingly harmonious mash-up of Josef Albers and Donald Judd with the ceremonial bundle.
The work’s hybrid nature has given curators different aspects to appreciate. Kathleen Ash-Milby, an associate curator at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Lower Manhattan, said she loved Mr. Gibson’s use of color and his adventurousness with materials, and that he has “been able to be successful in the mainstream and continue his association with Native art and artists.” (Ms. Ash-Milby gave Mr. Gibson his first New York solo show, in 2005 at the American Indian Community House.)
Marshall N. Price, curator of the National Academy show, said he was drawn by Mr. Gibson’s drive to explore “both the problematic legacies of his own heritage and the problematic legacy of modernism” through the lens of geometric abstraction. (Which, he noted, “has a long tradition in Native American art history as well.”)
And for Jenelle Porter, the Institute of Contemporary Art curator who organized the Boston show, it’s Mr. Gibson’s ability to “foreground his background,” as she put it, in a striking and accessible way. Ms. Porter discovered his work early last year, in a solo two-gallery exhibition organized by the downtown nonprofit space Participant Inc.
“People were raving about the show,” she said. “So I went over there and I was absolutely floored.”
The work was “visually compelling, and not didactic,” she added. And because “he’s painting on hide, painting on drums, you have to talk about where it comes from.”
Mr. Gibson only recently figured out how to start that conversation. Because his father worked for the Defense Department, he was raised in South Korea, Germany and different cities in the United States, so “acclimating was normal to me,” he said. And one of the most persistent messages he heard growing up was “never to identify as a minority,” he added.
At the same time, because much of his extended family lives near reservations in Oklahoma and Mississippi, Mr. Gibson also grew up going to powwows and Indian festivals. He even briefly considered studying traditional Indian art, but instead opted to major in studio art at a community college near his parents’ house outside Washington. In 1992, he landed at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago.
There, Mr. Gibson, who had just come out as gay, often felt pressured to examine just one aspect of his life — his Indian heritage, with its implicit cultural sense of victimhood — when what he really yearned to do was to paint like Matisse or Warhol. At the same time, he was learning about that heritage in a new way as a research assistant at the Field Museum aiding its compliance with the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.
As he watched the Indian tribal elders who frequently visited to examine the drums, parfleche containers, headdresses and the like in the Field’s collection, Mr. Gibson was struck by their radically different responses. Some groups “would break down in tears,” he said. “Or there would be huge arguments.”
He came to see traditional art then “as a very powerful form of resistance” and to better “understand its relationship to contemporary life.” And nothing else he’d encountered “felt as complete and fully formed as the objects themselves,” he said. “It certainly made it difficult for me to go into the studio and paint.”
Yet paint Mr. Gibson did — mostly expressionistic landscapes filled with Disney characters, like Pocahontas, and decorated with sequins and glitter. His work continued in a similar vein while he was earning his M.F.A. at the Royal College of Art in London. Although the Mississippi Band paid for his education, the experience gave him a welcome break from grappling with concerns about identity, he said, and a chance “to just look at art and think about the formal qualities of making an artwork.” (Along the way, he also met his husband, the Norwegian sculptor Rune Olsen.)
After returning to the United States in 1999, this time to New York and New Jersey, Mr. Gibson began painting fantastical pastoral scenes, embellishing their surfaces with crystal beads and bubbles of pigmented silicone, recalling 1970s Pattern and Decoration art. Those led to his first solo show with Ms. Ash-Milby in 2005, and his inclusion in the 2007 group show “Off the Map: Landscape in the Native Imagination” at the National Museum of the American Indian, as well as other group shows.
At the same time, Mr. Gibson was making sculptures with mannequins and African masks. While struggling to understand Minimalism, he also began to see the connection between Modernist geometric abstraction and the designs on the objects that had transfixed him in the Field’s collection.
His 2012 show with Participant, “One Becomes the Other,” proved to be a turning point. In it, he collaborated with traditional Indian artists to create works like the string of painted drums, or a deer hide quiver that held an arrow made from a pink fluorescent bulb. And once he set brush to rawhide, Mr. Gibson said, he was hooked. As well as being “an amazing surface to work on,” he said, “its relationship to parchment intrigued me.”
Its use also “positions the viewer to look through the lens that I’d been working so hard to illustrate.”
But the underlying change, Mr. Gibson added, came from his decision to shed the notion of being a member of a minority group. Suddenly all art, European, American and Indian alike, became merely “individual points on this periphery around me,” he said. “Once I thought of myself as the center, the world opened up.”
For two hours in early April, the largest draw at the Wildhorse Resort and Casino in northeastern Oregon wasn’t at a poker table but on a ballroom’s big screen. The casino, operated by the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, sponsored a viewing party to watch two of the tribes own compete in the NCAA Women’s Division I Basketball Championship.
Playing for the University of Louisville, sisters Shoni and Jude Schimmel have become heroes to Native Americans and that native pride is resonating throughout not only their 2,800-member tribe but throughout Indian Country. Louisville’s remarkable run ended with a 93-60 heartbreaking loss to the University of Connecticut, but the sisters’ feat and their continued play will serve as an inspiration for generations in Indian Country.
“We are extremely proud of Shoni and Jude Schimmel and deeply appreciative of the recognition they have brought to our people,” said LesMinthorn, the Tribe’s Chairman of the Board of Trustees.
The sisters’ love of the game is evident when their playing in a national championship game or in a pick up game at home which can include anyone from their four-year-old brother to their mother and father. “On any given day, I think we’re just ready to play ball,” said Shoni, a 5’9” junior guard. “That’s our competitive nature in us. We just want to go out there and win. We just want to have fun and compete.”
Basketball runs in the Schimmel family’s blood. The sisters’ father, Rick, played for one year at Stanford University and their mother, Ceci, a high school basketball coach played ball for Blue Mountain Community College in Pendleton, Oregon. The sisters began playing ball at around four years old in a co-ed basketball tournament for four-to-six year old players. Pushed in particular by their older brother, Shae, the sisters continued to improve their game and were later the subject of a documentary, “Off the Rez” that featured the Schimmel family leaving the reservation in pursuit of more opportunities for the family.
During her highly successful high school basketball career, Shoni opted to wait until after her senior year to choose a college. Unlike most highly sought after recruits, Shoni said she made the decision to wait because she wanted to enjoy being in high school. “I decided to go to the University of Louisville because – through the recruiting process – Coach (Jeff)Walz and staff stayed with me through the whole thing,” said Shoni describing the respect shown to her by Louisville. “They stayed with me and kept interest and didn’t give up on me.”
When Jude was ready to choose a college, she decided to follow her sister. “It’s really rare to get to play a Division I sport with your sister and I wanted to share the experience with her,” said Jude, a 5’6” sophomore guard.
In August 2011, the Louisville women’s basketball team visited the Umatilla Reservation on their way to Canada to play in a tournament. During the three-day visit, the team held a basketball clinic for youth and visited with tribal leaders. The team also visited the tribe’s Tamastslikt Cultural Institute for a tour of the museum and to learn tribal history and legends.
“Everyone wanted to see what the reservation was all about,” said Shoni noting that some teammates thought tribal members still lived in teepees. The trip was unifying for the team and for the sisters. “It was weird to have our immediate family and our basketball team family there,” Shoni said. “But it all came together. It was the best of both worlds.”
For both, the most remarkable moment in this year’s NCAA tournament run was the 82-81 defeat of the defending national champions Baylor Bears. Going in a 24-point underdog in a Sweet 16 match up, the charge was uphill for the fifth-seeded Louisville team. Late in the game, Shoni ran a fast break and defending the basket was 6’8” Britney Griner. Shoni drove the key, dribbled left and with her back to Griner and the hoop – she popped a shot off the glass for two. The shot exemplifies the next level game. Griner didn’t know what happened and she would have to review the film to see what would be the most exciting play of the tournament.
“We worked as a team and it was a once-in-a-lifetime moment,” Shoni said. “It was very special to all of us and it was amazing to feel like that.” Jude echoed her sister’s sentiments. “It was an incredible feeling and one of the biggest upsets in history,” Jude said.
The sisters’ credit their family for their success and for their strong connection to their tribe. As children, they dressed in traditional regalia handcrafted by their great grandmother and performed the Lord’s Prayer in sign language at local churches. The sisters’ younger family members continue to wear
the regalia as part of their family traditions. The sisters also credit much of their tribal knowledge to their grandmothers and father.
The pair used to dance when they were younger at tribal events such as the tribes’ Fourth of July powwow held at the Wildhorse Resort and Casino. However, the sisters’ college courses and basketball schedule may keep them from attending this year’s powwow.
Both do plan to one day possibly work for their tribe. First, each would like to be in the WNBA or play professionally overseas. However, Shoni, a communications major, and Jude, a sociology major, would like to eventually use their degrees to help Native people on the reservation.
“We both want to give back,” said Jude of returning to the reservation. Shoni also is considering the possibility of opening a restaurant that features traditional Native foods. “I want to make it known that we have our own foods too,” Shoni said. Holding on to their Native heritage is important for both. Jude said she is inspired to succeed by the Native Americans who helped pave the road for the sisters.
The Schimmel sisters will continue to do some paving of their own when the Louisville Cardinals return next year. And because of the Schimmel’s inspiring dedication, a watershed of Native American talented student athletes will begin to flow.
We thank the Creator.
Steve Cadue is Tribal Chairman of the Kickapoo Nation. He can be reached by email at steve.cadue@ktik-nsn.gov.
Marysville waterfront Photo from City of Marysville
City of Marysville, Wa
May 20, 2013
MARYSVILLE – The City of Marysville is one of eight communities in the Pacific Northwest recently awarded a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to assess, clean up and revitalize regional brownfield properties.
The EPA allocated $2.6 million from the federal agency’s Brownfields
Assessment, Revolving Loan Fund and Cleanup (ARC) Grants program. EPA Region 10 covers Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Alaska and 271 Native Tribes.
Marysville will receive a $200,000 Brownfields grant to assist with Ebey waterfront marina land cleanup. The cleanup grant would be used to remediate contaminated ground City-owned marina property at 1326 First St. just west of Ebey Waterfront Park. The marina property contains waterfront chemicals and pollutants common to timber industry and marine operations that have existed since the late 1800s. Grant funds also will be used to conduct groundwater monitoring and support community involvement activities.
“Brownfields grant dollars are a key component of realizing our goals of downtown and waterfront revitalization,” Mayor Jon Nehring says. “This grant is an important tool to helping us redevelop the marina property and bring jobs and economic development back to our waterfront.”
The grants help revitalize former industrial sites, turning them from problem properties to productive community use.
The EPA previously awarded the city with a Brownfields grant in May 2009 to clean up the Crown Pacific/Interfor mill site at 60 State Ave. on the waterfront just east of State Avenue.
Third time was the charm for City Engineering Services Manager Shawn Smith, who applied for the grant. The grant will officially be issued on Oct. 1, but hiring a consultant to develop a cleanup plan that meets approval of the state Department of Ecology and the EPA means that it could be 2015 before actual work starts.
Smith said the grant can be used to clean up the entire property, including the upland and in-water portions of the site.
Long-term plans as identified in the city’s 2009 Downtown Master Plan would see Ebey waterfront redeveloped with trails, apartments or condominiums and some commercial development. No specific plans have been decided for the marina site, Smith says.
A former sewage lagoon site and wetlands is planned as a 40-acre refuge for more than 140 species of birds.
By Alejandro Dominquez, The Herald
SNOHOMISH — People are invited to learn the latest details about a proposed wildlife sanctuary at Wednesday’s Parks Board meeting, scheduled for 7 p.m. at the Snohomish Boys & Girls Club, 402 Second St.
The board is expected to make a recommendation to the City Council on the sanctuary steering committee’s plan or ask for changes. The public can also make recommendations, project manager Ann Stanton said.
The wildlife viewing area also has a proposed name: Snohomish Riverview Sanctuary.
The sanctuary would be about 40 acres, including a former sewage lagoon and privately owned wetlands located next to the current sewage treatment plant, along the Snohomish River west of Highway 9.
More than 140 bird species have been seen nesting there or using the wetlands for habitat, including great blue herons, red-tailed hawks, swallows and ducks.
The master plan also proposes adding sidewalk and viewpoint areas on the south side of Riverview Road, Stanton said.
The park would also ban dogs because of the likelihood of harming viewing opportunities and habitat quality, Stanton said.
“The majority of the public comments are against dogs (in the park)” Stanton said.
The Snohomish City Council is scheduled to vote on the plan at a July meeting.
The council is also set to accept a $30,000 donation from a local Audubon Society member in early June. The donation is intended to purchase more land for the sanctuary.
People who want to know more about the park and are unable to attend the meeting can contact Stanton at 360-282-3195 or by email at stanton@ci.snohomish.wa.us.
(Everett, WA) – Every day, our community is changed by difference makers – people uniting for the common good. These difference makers are as diverse as their good deeds themselves: public figures and ordinary good Samaritans, senior citizens and seniors in high school, and individuals and corporations.
United Way of Snohomish County is accepting nominations for Spirit of Snohomish County Awards in four categories: Adult, Youth, Labor and Community Partner. Award winners will be recognized for their efforts to advance the common good and improve the lives of people in Snohomish County. They must also demonstrate a broad and deep commitment to the community.
Award winners will be honored at the annual Spirit of Snohomish County Breakfast, on Sept. 25 at Tulalip Resort Casino.
You may submit your nominations online or download the forms and mail them to Spirit of Snohomish County Awards; United Way of Snohomish County; 3120 McDougall Avenue, Ste. 200; Everett, WA 98201. You can also submit nominations by fax to 425.374.5555 or via email to events@uwsc.org.
Last year’s winners were Dominick Juarez (youth); Mary Jane Brell Vujovic (adult); Allyn Triezenberg (labor), Campbell’s StockPot (community partner) and the Bob Smith Family (Reeves/Sievers Founders’ Award). All of the nominations for the different awards – except the Reeves/Sievers Founders’ Award, which recognizes a lifetime of commitment to our community – are considered by a panel of volunteers.
For questions regarding the nomination process, please email events@uwsc.org.
An Irish company building turbines for the Snohomish PUD visited Everett to discuss the potential for a plant here.
Snohomish County PUD This artist’s rendering shows the tidal energy turbine Snohomish County Public Utility District plans to test to determine if tidal energy is a viable source of electricity.
By Bill Sheets, The Herald
An Irish company that builds tidal-power turbines is exploring the possibility of locating a plant in Western Washington — possibly in Everett.
Representatives of OpenHydro of Dublin visited Everett last week to discuss their technology with political and business leaders from Snohomish County, the region and the state.
The Snohomish County Public Utility District has applied with the federal government for a license to start an experimental tidal-power project in Admiralty Inlet between Fort Casey State Park and Port Townsend.
If the $20 million project is approved — a decision could come this summer — the PUD would buy two turbines from OpenHydro.
A majority interest in the Irish company was recently bought by DCNS, a maritime manufacturer based in Paris. OpenHydro will retain its name as a subsidy of the French company, according to an announcement by DCNS.
The PUD arranged the meeting in Everett, said Steve Klein, the utility’s general manager.
“They wanted to meet with the movers and shakers in the economic development community in Puget Sound,” he said.
Among those who attended the meeting at the PUD’s headquarters were Everett Mayor Ray Stephanson; Rick Cooper, chief executive officer of the Everett Clinic and chairman of Economic Alliance Snohomish County; state commerce director Brian Bonlender, and Sheila Babb from U.S. Sen. Patty Murray’s office.
OpenHydro, in business since 2004, has installed turbines off the Orkney Islands in Scotland; the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia, Canada, and near Brittany in France.
The company is planning new projects in the Orkneys and off the northern coast of Ireland, OpenHydro chief executive officer James Ives said in an email.
Now, the company sees Pacific Northwest waters as a good potential source of tidal power.
“As the turbine manufacturing requirements are of a large scale, OpenHydro plans on assembling all turbines as close to the deployment locations as possible,” he said.
Ives said the company is impressed by Snohomish County’s high-tech industry, including, but not limited to, Boeing.
“The region’s long history of high-specification engineering means that the skills, supply chain and infrastructure necessary to support this type of manufacturing activity are clearly available,” he said.
Stephanson said he made a pitch for Everett in particular.
“I just wanted to make sure they knew we had a nice deep-water port,” he said.
Ives said tidal turbines, electrical equipment and the steel base foundations for the turbines would be manufactured at the new plant. He estimated 300 jobs would be directly created and 600 spinoff positions would result from a plant turning out 100 generators per year.
In addition to tidal-power turbines, DCNS is experimenting with other technologies, including floating wind-turbine platforms, ocean-wave energy and a system that converts temperature changes in the ocean into energy, according to the company’s website.
Stephanson said he’s excited about the tidal-power technology in particular.
“It’s one more very positive opportunity for our part of the world, for growing the economy and jobs,” he said.
Cooper of the economic group said he was impressed by OpenHydro’s presentation.
“This is cutting edge stuff,” he said.
Cooper said plenty of good words were put in for Snohomish County.
“This was more a matter of establishing relationships and introducing people in the region,” he said. “I think the initial contacts have been made. We wanted to convey a welcoming presence, and I think we were successful in doing that.”
In the PUD’s project, the turbines would be placed in a flat area 200 feet underwater. Each circular turbine resembles a giant fan, sitting about 65 feet high on a triangular platform with dimensions of about 100 feet by 85 feet.
Together, the two turbines would generate about enough power for 450 homes at peak output. If the project goes well, the system could grow, PUD officials said.
The project is opposed by three Indian tribes, a cable company and a cable trade group.
The tribes, including the Tulalips, say the turbines could interfere with fishing. The cable interests believe the project could damage trans-Pacific cables that run through the inlet.
The turbines would be placed about 575 and 770 feet from fiber-optic cables owned by Pacific Crossing of Danville, Calif. The cables extend more than 13,000 miles in a loop from Harbour Pointe in Mukilteo to Ajigaura and Shima, Japan, and Grover Beach, Calif.
A federal study recently concluded the project would not affect fishing or the cables.
Junior Achievement is hosting its first Radiance in the Shadows event on June 8
By Marci Larsen, Superintendent of the Mukilteo School District
Junior Achievement in Snohomish County empowers young people to own their economic success by providing in-class curriculum that focuses on financial literacy, entrepreneurship, and work readiness. In Snohomish County, JA reaches over 14,000 students in a variety of public and private schools. With the help of 485 volunteers, JA students develop the skills they need to experience the realities of the real world. Thousands of local students are being exposed with age appropriate integrated curricula for grades K-12, designed to help them understand the world of economics and help to prepare them for lifelong learning and achievement.
JA Success Skills, a curriculum which is taught at several local high schools, allows students to learn the process of obtaining a job (including mock job interviews) and becoming a stronger employee for our local businesses. The students are taught by business professionals who share their expertise in their respective fields as it pertains to workplace protocol, ethics, and financial responsibility.
Another curriculum being taught, JA Personal Finance introduces students to the importance of making wise financial decisions. The program demonstrates the value of planning, goal setting, and thoughtful decision making within the context of personal finance. Junior Achievement in Snohomish County is providing real world learning experiences to students of all ages so they can be better prepared for their future and be informed citizens in the community.
In partnership with the Tulalip Resort & Spa and Long Shadows Winery, we are proud to announce that Junior Achievement is hosting its first Radiance in the Shadows event on June 8. This VIP event will feature an exclusive five-course dinner prepared by renowned Chef Perry Mascitti paired with wines from Allen Shoup, CEO of Long Shadows Winery. In addition to live music in the Oasis Pool area during a hosted cocktail reception, the evening will conclude with a private concert by local musician and national sensation Mycle Wastman, who debuted on NBC’s award winning series The Voice.
With the economic outlook being unsure, it is important to work with our youth of today, so they can be better prepared for the future. Along with many school districts, we support the efforts of JA as they help bridge the gap of financial literacy with our local students. All proceeds from this VIP event will stay in Snohomish County to provide more classroom programs in our schools. It is significant for the community to invest in the success of our students, which is why we encourage others to join us at the first Radiance in the Shadows event on June 8.
Dr. Marci Larsen is Superintendent of the Mukilteo School District; Shannon Affholter, Vice President, Economic Alliance Snohomish County; Ken Kettler of Tulalip Resort & Spa; and William S. Reith, with Hascal, Sjoholm & Company, PLLC
The Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe is undertaking the restoration of the internationally known botanical garden called Heronswood.
The tribe purchased the 15-acre property, located near the tribe’s reservation, in July 2012 mainly to preserve it for the community, said Noel Higa, the tribe’s economic development director.
“I think there was a real sense that a treasure could be lost if the tribe didn’t do what it could to rescue it,” he said. “Tribal council has been incredibly supportive of the garden restoration effort.”
Acting head gardener Celia Pedersen cleans vines from an arbor. Click on the photo for more of Heronswood.
Heronswood was established in the late 1980s by local horticulturist Dan Hinkley and gained global recognition as a nursery of rare plants collected from around the world. It was purchased by corporate nursery retailer Burpee in 2000 but then shut down by the company in 2006. The property was put to auction in July 2012 and was purchased by the tribe.
The tribe’s goal is to restore the gardens back to their historic internationally-acclaimed level but also to reflect tribal ownership, culture and traditions, said Laurie Mattson, executive director of the Port Gamble S’Klallam Foundation, the non-profit arm of the tribe that is overseeing Heronswood.
“We want to see the tribe get more involved in the development of the gardens too,” said Nancy Heckler, Heronswood general manager. “After all, it’s their garden now.”
There has been discussion about developing traditional and medicinal plant gardens as well as opening the grounds to private events. The tribe has already hosted one event – same-sex marriage ceremonies in February – and will host its first garden open and plant sale on May 18.
The conditions of the gardens are currently being assessed by the tribe and professional gardeners. Volunteers, including tribal citizens and former employees of Heronswood, are weeding, mulching and fixing up 6 acres of garden beds that are filled with native and non-native plants.
“The gardens are in restoration mode, including weeding, cutting back plants that have taken over, determining what plants currently exist and if they are properly associated with the garden’s naming system,” Heckler said. “Heronswood was known for its international collection and everything was catalogued. It’d be a shame to see it go to waste. Plus, there’s enough land to do all sorts of things.”
