Land Acknowledgement

Our company is headquartered on the stolen, ancestral lands and waters of the S’Klallam people. Core team members also occupy Suquamish, Duwamish, Muckleshoot, and Tulalip lands.

In 1855, delegates of the newly formed Washington territory used coercion and unfair negotiation tactics to convince the S’Klallam people to sign the Treaty of Point No Point, through which all three bands - the Jamestown S’Klallam, Port Gamble S’Klallam, and Lower Elwha Klallam - ceded 750,000 acres of land to the U.S. government. While they maintained their right to hunt, fish, and gather shellfish in “accustomed” areas, they lost access to massive portions of their homeland and were forced in certain cases to recover them either through purchase or through legal recourse, on which they had no prior dependence, as both were imposed and defined by the intruding Westerners. We encourage everyone to learn more about the different detailed histories of Western colonial invasion of S’Klallam lands at the following sites of the Port Gamble S’Klallam, Jamestown S’Klallam, and Lower Elwha Klallam. Furthermore, we acknowledge that the S’Klallams and other Northwestern Tribes have lived on these lands for millennia, that their history is comprised of so much more than the disruption and violence inflicted by settler colonialism and the U.S. government over the past several hundred years.

Across the ƛ̕ɬáɬc (salt water, Klallam) or x̌ʷə́lč (sea/sound, Lushootseed) from the lands of the S’Klallam, Chief siʔaɫ (Seattle) and other Tribal leaders were pressured by the U.S. government to sign the Treaty of Point Elliot, also in 1855, negotiating access to traditional hunting and fishing territories but ceding their lands, the vast majority of which are still occupied by colonial society along what is called Puget Sound. To this day, promises set out in the Treaty of Point Elliot have not been honored by the U.S. government.

Meanwhile, the protections for traditional fishing, hunting, and gathering rights that Native leaders secured with much effort made it possible for Tribes to continue the cultural practices of their ancestors and maintain relations with their homelands and waters.

This land acknowledgment reminds us of our indebtedness and responsibility to the original stewards of this land, the inextricable and enduring connection between Indigenous peoples and the earth, and our profound gratitude for the environmental work and activism being done today by Native communities and scientists using Traditional Ecological Knowledge.

Through this land acknowledgement, we commit to further educating ourselves on the history of erasure and genocide of Native peoples and to decolonizing our approach to climate adaptation. When working with Tribes, we will endeavor to ask thoughtful questions and imbue respect and safety into our shared spaces. We invite other practitioners and individuals to do the same.