! WEBPAGE UNDER CONSTRUCTION (SEPT 2024)
Duwamish River
The Waterlines Project Map (PDF) is a rendering of the Seattle region in the mid-19th century, just prior to non-Indigenous settlement, created using photorealistic aerial views collaged with hand painting. The map content integrates research from the sciences, natural and cultural histories, and informed imaginings. On the reverse side are four tours of the area’s history presented through the lens of its changing landscape with a timeline going back 20,000 years.
Printed copies are available at the Duwamish Longhouse & Cultural Center, while supplies last.
Duwamish River Tour
The place names on this map, written in the Southern Lushootseed language of the Coast Salish people in the Seattle area, are drawn from elders who worked with ethnographers in the early twentieth century, from the work of linguists and scholars such as the late Vi taqʷšəblu Hilbert, and the research of q́ʷat́ələmu (Nancy Jo Bob) and qəɬtəblu (Tami Hohn).
Place names are stories: proof of presence, archives of meaning, evidence of ancestry, and a reference for treaties and other legal connections to territory. They provide context to the ongoing presence and strong connections to the city for Indigenous people as co-managers of our shared resources.
The historical landscape conditions are based on mapping done by the Puget Sound River History Project for guiding regional issues of resource management, restoration, and environmental planning. These studies can inform urban design decisions related to green infrastructure, flood management, and other contemporary planning issues surrounding sustainability and resilience.
https://www.burkemuseum.org/static/waterlines/project_map.html
James Rasmussen stands near the Duwamish River at həʔapus Village Park on Thursday in West Seattle. Rasmussen has served on the Duwamish Tribal Council for 26 years and worked with the Duwamish River Community Coalition for 20 years. (Ellen M. Banner / The Seattle Times)
The Seattle Times: This departing Seattle activist helped save the Duwamish River. Here’s what he wants you to know by Daniel Beekman (Jun 11, 2022)
What does the Duwamish River sound like? Water swirling. Herons croaking. Ships thrumming. James Rasmussen telling stories.
The waterway that runs past South Park, Georgetown and Sodo to Elliott Bay will lose a voice this summer when Rasmussen, after more than three decades working to revive the polluted stretch, retires and leaves Seattle.
The 66-year-old, a longtime Duwamish Tribal Council member and Duwamish River Community Coalition leader whose hard-nosed advocacy and understanding of Indigenous history have helped secure and watchdog crucial cleanup projects, recently sold the Beacon Hill house where he grew up and is moving to Las Vegas, where his daughter lives.
“It breaks my heart a little,” said B.J. Cummings, who founded the Coalition. “But we will continue to see his influence on the people who are going to carry on with the work.”
Rasmussen fished the river as a child, slipping onto the water with his father in the dark, just before sunrise. Industrialized starting in the early 1900s, the waterway was gritty by the 1960s. Still…
“Once, we hooked this big salmon. It was pulling us around the river,” he said. “Then it wrapped our line around the docks and was gone.”
Descended from people who lived along the Black River, a tributary of the Duwamish River, Rasmussen learned from his grandfather and mother that the animals he saw while fishing were his relatives, he said.
“Because my family comes from here and they come from here,” he said.