Before colonization by white settlers and industrialization into a port, the tideflats provided abundant habitat for salmon and shellfish which in turn provided food for the Puyallup Tribe of Indians. This model juxtaposes an abstraction of the original size of traditional Puyallup territory with the size of the land of today’s Puyallup reservation. Compression of physical space is an easily observable impact that Port has had on the Puyallup land ownership and access, but invisible contamination of traditional fishing and food gathering habitat is another layer of this ongoing narrative of compression, negotiation, and loss.
Processes: compression, habitat loss
“The Tideflats are culturally important to the Tribe and provide rare fish habitat and shellfish recovery nurseries for species integral to our treaty-protected fishing rights. The area in and around the Port of Tacoma has been our home for thousands of years.
The Puyallup people ceded most of our territory to the United States in the Treaty of Medicine Creek in 1854, but we reserved certain aboriginal lands (later granted to us as a reservation by presidential executive orders), and we expressly fought for and retained our fishing rights, including those on lands that were ceded.
Our reservation is all that we have left of our aboriginal homeland, and it cannot be replaced.”
-Puyallup Tribe of Indians Council Chairman Bill Sterud