(slow orchestral music) Man: The struggle for identity is not to regain it, but to be able to claim it openly.

I know of no other racial group in the United States that has to prove who they are.

Whatever a person claims to be, most folks just simply take them at their word.

And yet, if you say you're an American Indian, you've got to prove it.

- : Well, the treaty was in 1855, or the war was in 1876, or whatever.

Why can't people just get over it?

We live in the now, right?

We don't live in the past.

And I always wanna ask people, what exactly is the it that you're wanting people to get over?

- : Tribes that are less powerful because they don't have the acknowledgement, because they don't have the government to government relationship, are the front line of a battle that is continuing at the very hearts and souls of American Indians who believe in tribal sovereignty.

This affects all of us, and those that think it does not affect them, will be affected by it eventually.

There will be some regulation, there will be some action that will diminish them also, if given enough time.

And the only thing that I need to show to prove it, is to look at the history of the United States in dealing with American Indian people.

It is consistent and it is not good.

- : The government has made it awfully hard on Chinook people.

Our families have continually suffered.

- : We have a very great story to tell.

And I think that we need to have people come forward and do things in the public eye that would uphold the Duwamish.

I mean, after all that, our city is named after our chief.

And that, to me, is really important.

And that's really special 'cause there's no other town named after an Indian.

I mean, isn't that something special?

- : Recognition is the acknowledgement of a sovereignty of your tribal government.

And that enables that government, then, to stand against the forces that are in its immediate surroundings, that have been declaring that we don't exist.

- : And these are the people that fight, men and women, they fight for this recognition, because we are not gone, we are still here.

- : It's important for our people to not just learn from one story, but to know that there's many different stories.

Now, they are definitely not the same, at all, but we're all still in the same fight.

We're all still fighting the same battles, and it's important for us to band together, stand side-by-side and overcome together.

(tribal chanting music with heavy drums) - : They say well, where are your people?

Well, the promise of the treaties was never given to our people.

But, I have to tell you that I'm so proud of the people who still hang on there and say we're Duwamish.

And I say to anybody, our people are still here.

Even though you don't see them, we are still here.

- : As a Duwamish, I'm back on the river, drawn to the river.

So when we look at this island behind us, this is on original Duwamish.

And so, just up from where we are, you can see an ancient village site, or remnants of ancient village shells and all of that stuff.

And so, they're all still here.

All of the ancestors are still here, in spite of all the industry that you see here, behind us.

The river still flows.

The people are still here.

- : We're in the city of Seattle, which is one of the largest cities on the west coast.

We are a large freight portal, and the major city in the state of Washington.

And the Duwamish River is the industrial base for the city of Seattle.

That's kind of the way the city looks at it.

Duwamish River is one of the main arteries in this area that the Duwamish Tribe used.

There was village sites on the Duwamish River, as well as in Elliott Bay, in Renton, in Lake Washington, all the way over to Lake Sammamish.

And so, when I talk about western King County, that's where the Duwamish Tribe was.

So, home is different.

It's not just a place where you've lived for the last 10 years, it's a place where my people have been for almost 10,000 years.

This is the place the creator gave us.

This is home.

That's what home means to me.

The myths that are up and down this river that talk about when the ice receded.

North wind and south wind met here, it's a very important thing.

And it talks about when the ice receded here.

(speaks in Lushootseed - : My name is Workman.

(speaks in Lushootseed) I am of the Duwamish Tribe.

(speaks in Lushootseed) And great, great, great, great grandson of Chief Seattle.

- : Chief Seattle was both Duwamish and Suquamish.

His mother, Sholeetsa, was a high-born Duwamish from the little town of Stuk, which is Renton, today.

And then, his dad was full-blooded Suquamish.

Our area here, it had everything we needed to survive on.

We use the cedar for cutting down, to add buoyancy to it.

And then you could split it and build the long house with it, and make it where it's, it was just good for everything.

I mean we use the tree limbs for the baskets and use it for making all kinds of things.

I feel that I must have a special, something special to share with most people and I enjoy that.

And I just keep weaving because I love to do it.

- : We are Indian, we have always known we were Indian.

We're always been, I've grown up being proud of my Indian heritage.

And I'm told over and over, well you're not a recognized tribe.

It upsets me.

- : As far as I'm concerned and the tribe is concerned, we don't change who we are.

We can't change who we are.

So we just keep moving forward and how we can.

(melancholy music) - : We aren't very far removed from a time when it was just native people here.

Today, people want to say oh, this was so long ago, get over it, whatever it is.

This is not our experience.

In our experience, my dad's grandmother was born in 1886, you don't have to go very far back to a time when it was the Chinook people, you know, the Wahkiakum, the Cathlamet, the Clatsop, the Lower Chinook, the Willapas, when you think of it in a short time scale like that, my dad's always said, it's the blink of an eye that non-natives have been here in our history.

- : So, I am a descendant of Huckswelt, the last full chief of the Willapa Tribe.

And also a signature signer of the 1851 Tansy Point Treaty.

And I'm the elected chairman of the Chinook nation, which comprises the five tribes.

And it's the combination of that that allows me the honor and privilege to speak on behalf of our people.

This is the Willapa River, the river of my ancestors.

That's a great privilege to be able to tell people that my family has never ever left where we came from.

- : I'm a student of our elders.

I'm a proponent for our rights and our history.

Relaying the words of our ancestors.

Hearing the stories of what was happening because they were really working hard, in my lifetime, to establish real, genuine fishing rights for the tribe.

- : I come down from oskalawiliksh, and oskalawiliksh is my third great grandfather.

He was a treaty-signer of the 1851 Tansy Point Treaties.

Yes, there's stories to tell about each of these people.

- : There are a ton of Chinooks still in Bay Center.

There's a bunch, still, in Clatsop area.

I mean, we're all still Ilwaco, all these places, Longview, I was born in Longview, raised on Longview.

- : When we're traveling on these canoes, you know, traveling down those villages, like Skamokawa and down by Pillar Rock and into the Willapa Bay, Goose Point, and all these other belief sites.

You know, the ancestors are traveling with us, it's real obvious.

And they're proud of us, that we're continuing to battle.

We just hope that someday we're gonna be able to take care of our elders properly, get them some elder housing, get our youth education.

- : We do think that this is one of the more densely-populated areas in native North America.

Comcomly was the premier, had started off being a second or third-level chief, but was able to maneuver himself into being, certainly by 1800 or 1810, the principal chief on the lower river.

- : Right behind me is the concrete replica of Chief Comcomly's grave.

He was an important leader in a very important during Chinook history.

There was a lot of contact between British and American sailors and the Chinook people.

Especially with the Oregon territory being extremely important to the outcome of the future United States of America.

He was the one that everybody came to when they wanted to communicate with other tribes or other ships that would come here.

- : And when McLoughlin came with American Fur Trade Company and Astor came with the Hudson Bay, before that, they actually called Comcomly their benefactor.

- : I'd say, at one time, when the Spanish was our first contact, before the Europeans came, there was probably about 80 to 90,000 Chinook people, but unfortunately the Spanish brought in smallpox, and so the population went down.

Later on, as Lewis and Clark, or "Clueless and Lark", as I like to refer to them, because they came the wrong direction.

All the other Europeans had been coming up the river for three decades, Lewis and Clark were coming down the river.

Recently, we've had elders that have passed away, remember hearing stories about Lewis and Clark from their great grandmother, when their great grandmother was a child, meeting them.

So, this is all recent history for us over here.

- : Lewis and Clark, in their core of discovery expedition, set out to find a Pacific water way to the northwest.

They'd been traveling for a year and a half, almost two years now, and they're so close to their destination, they're actually right across the water.

And the weather had been so terrible, it was mid-November, that they had to stop for three weeks, they couldn't move.

Comcomly and his chance just stumbled upon them, cold, wet, hungry, exhausted, and they picked them up, took them to their village, took care of them.

- : It's really impossible to talk about the creation of Seattle, the founding of Seattle, without talking about indigenous people, without talking about indigenous labor, indigenous knowledge, and by and large, that's from the Duwamish people.

So, from the beginning, they're completely, inextricably linked.

Si'ahl, a honorable person, upper-class person.

Descendant from important towns on both sides of the sound and would have had extensive oratory powers, skills of public speaking, which is understood as spiritual power.

He had political acumen, that allowed him to maintain connections between families, between communities, across a big chunk of central Puget Sound.

So he was quite a powerful figure, by all accounts, including by settler accounts.

Virtually everything that happened in the founding of Seattle, was made possible by indigenous people, including Si'ahl.

So that first winter that Denny Party spent at Alki Point, which is really a terrible place to spend the winter.

It's very exposed, they brought other kinds of food and so on, to that place, to help the people survive the winter.

- : Settlers came in 1851.

We met them at Alki.

We're a very peaceful people, we understand the stories and we'd try to help them.

And continue to help them.

- : And Si'ahl also played a role, not just as a leader in his own community, but as something of a labor contractor to organize native men as laborers in the saw mill.

And if we look a couple years ahead, into the founding of the town of what became the city of Seattle, native people played huge roles in that downing, as laborers, they're clearing the land, cutting down trees and shipping that lumber to San Francisco.

Women working in people's homes.

- : Even as the Duwamish were pushed off the land, denied the access to the Hazelnut Groves and the various beaches and rivers, and places where they got food, they're starving, some of them go off and work at saw mills, some of them, inter-berries, and so on, they try to survive.

- : There's a real range of perspectives that you see in the documents from early settlers, in terms of their attitudes towards native people.

You have everything from outright murderous violence, and there are cases of that, native people being hanged on the front street of Seattle, in the very first years, all the way to mixed race families.

And, in fact, in the 1860s and '70s, mixed race families were so common in the city, that some of the more elite leaders in town, saw this as a real problem.

This was a bit of a PR issue for them, 'cause the idea was, we're gonna come out here and build a white community, and then visitors would come and they would see all these mixed race children, people speaking Lushootseed as well as Chinook jargon, and this was not the plan, right?

So there becomes a real anxiety among city leaders to whiten the place up.

And so you see this real range from paternalism, we'll take care of our Indians, to outright hatred, to love.

It's a real mix of reactions to native people.

All of those, though, speak to the level of intimacy that people had.

The important thing to remember about treaties, is that treaties don't give rights to native people.

Treaties reserve rights on the part of native people.

That's a very important distinction and a lot of people really don't understand that.

I think a lot of people sense that the government was somehow giving native people something, by going through these treaties.

But the treaties had a number of things that they reserved, and those included things like the right to hunt and fish, rights to certain places, and things like schools, blacksmiths, things like this.

These are really common parts of treaties all over the American west.

Things that were supposed to be reserved and promised by the federal government.

- : When Anson Dart, who was the superintendent from the Bureau of Indian Affairs was sent out in 1851 and make our treaties, he was instructed by the president to make sure that all treaties, when they're signed, and this was, he was doing Oregon, California, Washington, and when all the treaties were signed, the tribes were removed from where pioneers were.

- : The thing was, we'd been interacting with settlers and pioneers in a positive way for a long, long time now, because that was just in our nature.

- : Chinookan people ran all the way from the Dalles to the mouth of the Columbia River, but when treaties came in and the treaties were being ratified, a lot of those upper-river Chinookan people went to Yakima or Warm Springs.

There was people that went to Grand Ronde, and of course, our five tribes in the Anson Dart Treaty were supposed to have a reservation as well, and that reservation was gonna be the Willapa Bay, which would have been great for us.

- : 1851, the Anson Dart Treaties allowed us the ability to stay in the locations where we were living, basically, in an amalgamated village or two, at the time, and allowed us access to resources.

It was very important for our ancestors at the time, and continues to be important for us today, to be with the bones of our ancestors, to be on our aboriginal land, in our traditional places, and that's what was negotiated in 1851.

- : I know Anson Dart was in a hurry to get these treaties ratified, because the president had realized that land was being given away for almost three years before they decided to do treaties with us, so that's illegal in the World Doctrine, and therefore, it was kind of a rush.

But the other reason I feel that the Anson Dart Treaty was not ratified, is that it was taken back to the Senate in DC, and unfortunately the Senate was told not to worry about the Chinook people, that we were so infected by malaria, we'd be gone.

- : So, they shelved the treaties.

Which is why those treaties were never ratified.

In 1855 they realize that we hadn't all perished, so they sent out territorial Governor Stevens for the 1855 Stevens' treaties.

Those treaties would have moved us off of the mouth of the Columbia River, off of the mouth of the Willapa River, and relocated us.

And that was not acceptable to our people.

So our people wouldn't sign.

Which is why we ended up with no treaty.

- : It wasn't gonna be what we were telling them we wanted and what we were requesting, which was land on the south end of Willapa Bay.

It was, you'll have to move north to the land of the Quinaults, and the lower Chehalis, and Chinook representatives were beside themselves on this issue, we were not gonna do that.

We were gonna stay in our own territory, and it's what broke up that treaty negotiation.

- : On the last day of negotiations at the Chehalis River Treaty Council, Isaac Stevens cut it off, he said I'm leaving.

- : The fact that we had no treaty did not mean we weren't a tribe, it just meant we didn't have a treaty.

- : In 1864, the Secretary of the Interior wrote a document that said he was taking all of southwest Washington and, clearly, our tribal lands were in Oregon, and they were taken the same way.

But by the stroke of a pen, the Secretary of the Interior took the land for the United States.

And it is unconstitutional.

- : It was probably one of the richest areas at the end of the 19th century.

And then in the 20th century, we'd be the most economically depressed areas in the state.

- : The Chinook were given a choice, as I understand the history, of either relocating far upland, with some of the far up-river tribes, with whom they had a completely different way of life.

Just imagine the coastal rainforest environment, where you derive your living from the sea, from salmon fisheries, you build your homes out of the cedar trees, you make your clothing out of the cedar bark, that's your whole lifestyle.

And you've lived there for the time the memorial as far as your people are concerned.

Now, you would be going upriver to where there are no cedar trees, the salmon run, but far, far up.

There are no crabs, there are no shellfish, the berries aren't there, or you can move up-coast, to, at least in that case it would have been a similar environment, I suppose.

But it's different people.

And you weren't just gonna move, but you are going to become those people.

So we're just going to tell you, the people you have always known and existed, and your culture, and your tribe, and your names, and your property are henceforth gone.

You must go up and live with another people, with who you often competed in the past.

And they will be making the rules for you.

You lose your identity.

You lose your property.

You lose your rights.

You lose your culture.

You lose your history.

Why not take that deal?

That was the choice they were given.

Or, we will just proclaim that you're no longer an officially recognized tribe.

And therefore, you won't have any rights.

And the Chinook people said we're not taking your deal.

If we accept your deal, we lose everything forever.

If we deny, you can say we don't exist, but we still exist.

We will continue to have our language, we will continue to have our culture, we will continue to have at least some of our property, we will continue to have our traditions, our own leadership, our tribal governance, our own way of life.

That's what they chose, which is what almost every single American would choose for their own family.

- : We, 100%, believe we have these inherited rights, nobody's extinguished our rights to the aboriginal title of land, or this ability to fish or hunt or gather in our own territory.

It's become more and more difficult through time, but in my lifetime, we have been able to do these things as Indians, and I'm not gonna be satisfied until I see that my kids have this right as well.

- : We talk about rights, there's so many rights that we don't have, that's pathetic.

We don't have NAGPRA rights, we don't have the right to protect our ancestors that are buried, we don't have the... there's so many rights we don't have.

And it's just, it's sad not to be able to protect those thousands of folks that are on this river.

- : There is no question, with any of the tribes here in the area, that there is a Duwamish Tribe.

There has been a Duwamish Tribe.

The first signature on the Point Elliott Treaty, which is the treaty that most tribes in Puget Sound are part of, is Chief Seattle.

And he signed as a Duwamish, Suquamish chief.

Five other signatures were Duwamish headmen.

Headmen of their villages, and they're signed that way.

The Indian agent that was out here, made a petition to the federal government that said the Duwamish Tribe needs to have a reservation here.

'Cause they're not going anywhere.

And so, that was supposed to be done at a place called Fort Dent.

- : It wasn't a large reservation, by any means, but it was proposed.

And there is a document that sort of shows where it would be.

But in 1866, virtually every white man in King County signed a petition against the reservation, so it was never ratified by congress.

- : What that petition said is that this land is too valuable for Indian people, we can't have an Indian reservation anywhere close to us.

- : Duwamish means the people of the inside.

Which means we live on all the waterways.

And we lived in long houses.

And the way that they tried to get rid of us, is to burn down our homes.

- : The last long houses for the Duwamish people that were here, were burned to the ground.

And burned to the ground because this was, they were just starting to open up this area for real estate development.

And in those days, you could not do real estate development if there's still Indian people there, because people don't wanna live next to Indian people.

- : They kept pushing us off of our Duwamish River and the other rivers that were there, the Cedar and all that.

And when we were downtown, there was no place else for us to go except onto an island that was made by the ballast out of the sailing ships.

- : And Ballast Island would be where the tall ships would come in to Puget Sound and pick up all these trees that were being harvested, they would offload their ballast rocks in Elliott Bay, and eventually this built up this big rock place called Ballast Island.

And the Duwamish were given that to live on, just a bunch of rocks in the middle of the bay.

Those rocks eventually became so valuable, that they were kicked off, they being my tribe (speaks Lushootseed) off of Ballast Island.

Nowhere, could the Duwamish live.

- : As a matter of fact, there were actually other laws that said Indian people couldn't be in the city of Seattle after dark.

Indian people, if you were working in the city of Seattle, you had to have a place for them to be, and to go after dark, so that they wouldn't be amongst the population.

- : When you have people who are still living on the land in traditional ways, or doing their best to do that, if you transform the landscape entirely, that's going to cause all kinds of chaos in that community.

And so that seems to be the cracks, in some ways, of the recognition question.

And it comes down to environmental change.

This is the same decade when the Duwamish River is being channelized and straightened, and there are literally native people dying, starving to death, inside of downtown in 19 teens.

So this is reality for Duwamish people during that era.

- : They created these reservations for the Indians to get away from where the settlers are coming from, the east coast.

So, but, they forgot to make sure that there was enough homes or places and food.

And our people did not survive, so they just came back to the aboriginal, their traditional places and still lived here.

They still survived in the woods.

- : There were originally four rivers that came in to the Duwamish, the Black, the Cedar, the Green, and the White.

With the lowering of Lake Washington, which was part of the Lake Washington ship canal process, the Black River ceased to exist.

And this is where a large number of Duwamish people were actually living at the time.

- : There was about six long houses at that time, well, they lived along the water.

Well, the water dried up, and it killed that village.

- : The Black River ceased to exist in the course of about a day.

And there was just sort of pools left, and the holes in the bottom of the river where you would fish, those were sort of left as pools, with fish in them, and there's a story of settlers going out and kind of having a party and walking out onto the river bed with burlap sacks and just picking up the fish and taking them away, in the sense that it was a party.

- : And so the people that were living here, no longer had access to their food source.

And so this was the last vestige of the Duwamish Tribe, was right here on the Black River.

There was 100 or so of them, and that would be around the year of, well, 1916.

That would be 100 years ago.

We're almost at the centennial.

I'm not sure how I'm gonna feel about that.

- : Behind me is Kellogg Island.

That's the current name of the island.

A long time ago, was known as Mud Island, and Mud Island actually stretched from where this island is here about another five miles over to Beacon Hill.

It was one of the largest mud flats on the west coast.

And this is where we used to gather.

- : The city of Seattle, late 1800s, early 1900s, knew it needed to have an industrial area to really be a thriving city.

And, this was the place that was designated for that.

And so, they brought in dirt and garbage and anything else that they could find to fill this area in.

And through all of that, that's where we have now, the industrial area that's down here.

In a lot of places, we don't even know it's down there.

Rubbage, or rubbish from San Francisco earthquake would up down here.

- : Right behind me, we're literally looking at the Duwamish homelands.

And so, if you were a tribe in a more remote area, the impact of those treaties was more gradual.

But, what's behind me, is literally the Duwamish River and the tidelands that are associated with that.

We have a football stadium and a baseball stadium in the tidelands that were inhabited by the Duwamish Tribe.

- : We are river people, this is where we come from.

This is our place.

And, it's been damaged, just like Duwamish people have been damaged.

- : The Duwamish had real challenges that they face by not having a reservation, and by being located in a place that was going to become a city.

And this is true, I think, for any native community that owns a territory that becomes a city.

It's very difficult for those kinds of communities to hold onto land.

And so, by the 1870s, the 1880s, the 1890s, you see Duwamish people still living in their traditional territory, but usually at the edges.

The urban fabric gets tighter and tighter and tighter, and so there are fewer and fewer spaces for native people to live if they wanna live in traditional ways.

- : To be literally at ground zero of the impact of western expansion, is a unique burden that the Duwamish faced.

I mean, because, Seattle has been the center of that impact.

These are rights that are reserved by the Duwamish Tribe, they're not rights granted to them by the United States.

So, in other words, the Duwamish were the sovereigns of this land, and they entered into a treaty with another sovereign, where the Duwamish reserved rights to themselves in perpetuity.

(drums beating) - : The relationship between the federal government and the American Indian tribes is spelled out in the constitution.

And it doesn't say federal tribes are acknowledged, that certain tribes are acknowledged, it just says the American Indian tribes, right in the congress clause.

The way that the clause reads, at least from my perspective, is that there's an understanding that there are these nations around us, that we are living among, and that that is the federal government that will have direct communication and dealings with these other sovereigns.

And, it's important to understand that that is the basis of the relationship.

It is an acknowledgement of inherent sovereignty.

- : The recognition process is not a gift to Indian tribes, it's a solemn duty of the United States government.

- : Therefore any tribe that gets through the process, sovereignty isn't being bestowed, it's merely being acknowledged.

It's a sovereignty that existed, which means that it's a correction in the relationship of the federal government with that tribe.

The federal government neglected to do its job.

Federal acknowledgement is the process is trying to correct those years and generations of injustice and neglect.

- : The process for recognition is a many, multi-year process.

It's where angels fear to tread in many cases.

- : There are four avenues for treaty-signatory tribes, like the Chinook, like Chief Seattle's Duwamish tribe of Indians, to achieve restoration of the federal recognition that we most certainly had at the time of treaty signing.

The first is, by executive order of the president of the United States.

The second is through the courts, through a lawsuit.

This is the avenue, by which the Samish Tribe was restored.

- : And of course, the Samish case became very interesting, and eventually they received recognition, but not until they, twice, had to find contempt of court against the people in the Department of the Interior around, colluding against them.

- : The third is through act of Congress, and the fourth is through the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the Interior Department.

- : The tribe that was seeking recognition would file a petition, with evidence.

The Department of the Interior would review that evidence, make a preliminary determination either in favor of the tribe or against the tribe.

Then there was another opportunity for the tribe to remedy those deficiencies, an then reach a final decision.

- : Anything that prevents historic tribes from enjoying the government-to-government relationship that they deserve, and should have, and actually does exist but is being denied by the federal government, is a form of termination.

- : There is the political elements.

There will be, many times, attacks on the integrity of the people, on individuals, on the motivations.

And so, you have to have very tough skin to go through the process.

The strength of your ancestors and your own belief and your identity, are really is what sustains people, I think, through that process.

- : The intent of that process was not to be a block or a gate to prevent tribes from getting in, but actually to assist worthy tribes, to assist historic communities, to gain the acknowledgement that they were due.

And since that time, it has been twisted to becoming a stumbling block of a process that uses Draconian tactics and irrational tactics to prevent tribes from getting through.

And it's almost as though the goal of the process is to stop tribes from being acknowledged, that's supposed to assist them.

So much so that the last two tribes to successfully navigate the process and be listed, required three decades of work, hundreds of thousands of pages of documents, millions, and I would dare say tens of millions of dollars, knowing the tribal leaders in those communities, and the intervention of the federal courts.

Something has gone wrong since 1978.

- : The Duwamish Tribe is one of the first tribes in the state of Washington to adapt a modern council, Robert's rules of order, and everything else because they knew they needed that to be interacting with anybody outside of tribal liaisons, which they did.

They were on the forefront for a lot of tribes, here in western Washington, and also on the forefront of treaty rights.

Going back to the 1960s and 1970s.

- : And all my memories, as far back as I can remember, are people getting together as a tribe.

I have a copy of a constitution from 1925, that a group of people got together to write, and it's the Constitution of the Duwamish Tribe.

- : The NCAI determined, many years ago, that something was wrong.

And it was around the same time, that, actually, federal studies were showing something was wrong with the process.

That out of the estimated 200 or so tribes that were targeted to be reviewed for federal acknowledgement, only 17 had gotten through the process since 1978.

And many more had been turned down, turned away.

The process had become so expensive, prohibitive, invasive, humiliating, dehumanizing to a certain extent, that many worthy tribes were to a point that they didn't feel that they could go through the process because they could not afford the representation.

- : We've found records of congressional hearings in 1917 and thereabouts, where the Duwamish were traveling back to Washington, testifying before congressional committees.

And those are the most important kinds of records and they speak, really, to the Duwamish as a political entity, asserting their rights as a tribe.

- : Studies were done in the early '70s dealing with the fact that many historic tribes, communities that had continued from contact, were not acknowledged, were not being served, were underserved and were some of the most underserved native communities in the country.

- : And at that time, all the tribes were involved, fighting for their right to fish in all the waters in the Puget Sound.

My brother approached me in '74, he was fishing in the Duwamish River, and he came to my house.

And he was being sighted by the Department of Fisheries for fishing in the Duwamish River.

This one particular day, he said, you know you need to get involved.

And I said, well, what do I have to do?

He said, oh just go to a few meetings.

And, so I start working with the former chair, which is Willard Bill, and then I was formally elected the chair in 1975.

In the meanwhile, we lost the right to fish, so we naively believed, well we'll just write a petition to the government, and we'll get our status back.

So we wrote a formal letter back to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and it was returned to us.

In the meanwhile, we didn't know that the federal government was setting up rules for recognition across the country.

So there was, so we began that process to prove who we are as a tribe.

- : The Department Branch of Acknowledgment and Research is a very narrow, fact-finding body.

They are not necessarily a policy-making body.

And so, their goal, their job, is to make recommendations to the Assistant Secretary's office.

And then the Assistant Secretary makes the judgments based on all the facts that are presented on whether a tribe should be recognized.

And so, the real decision-maker in these matters is the Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs.

- : They were submitting their petitions in the 1980s, in the 1990s, literally the last day of the Clinton Administration, there was a document signed by the Department of the Interior, that recognized the Duwamish Tribe.

- : The Undersecretary of the Interior called the tribal office and said I'm signing off on the recognition of the Duwamish Tribe in my office, and there was all kinds of people in his office at that time.

People that worked it and everything else.

I just wanted you to know that that's what's happening right now, here, in Washington DC.

Is that this is one of the last things that we needed to get done.

And we're getting it done before the administration is done.

- : I was over here sitting in the office by myself, we have decided to recognize you.

And Cindy, she came in about after it, I said they said they just recognized us, so then we spread the word and everybody showed up.

We were very, very happy that that happened after all those years.

- : At the end of the administration, when I made a decision to recognize the tribe, I felt that there was a substantive substantial reasons for the tribe to be recognized based on law, evidence, facts.

- : It floored us, we didn't have any idea it was gonna happen at that time.

For a weekend, we were recognized.

- : All the documents were signed that were necessary to recognize the tribe.

Later, that was challenged on the grounds that there were a couple of documents that were ministerial that were not properly signed, while not reflecting on the actually decision, were seized upon by opponents of the Duwamish to say that it was not a proper recognition.

- : The very first thing the George Bush administration did, was to put on hold any executive action that happened by the Clinton Administration within the last six months at the end of his administration.

- : The fact that some documents weren't signed, even though ministerial, were seized on by opponents to say that the decision was not final.

And my view, as I presented testimony to the Congress, that was a final decision and the tribe, really, at that point, should have been recognized as an official Indian tribe.

- : Well in the process, you can go through the administrative review regarding this decision.

They didn't wanna review it, so they just said the decision holds.

You're not recognized by the federal government.

- : And then our attorneys, who had been working with us for a long time, said you have two options.

Now, you can go to court, which you have standing to do, or you can try to get a bill through congress.

And, bill through congress is gonna be a lot less expensive than a court case.

So, for about five years, we worked on trying to get a bill through congress.

Our local Congressman, Jim McDermott, has been very good at trying to get that bill through.

- : I put these bills in, because it's a matter of justice.

There is a question of why, after all these years, the Duwamish had never been recognized.

There are other tribes as well, who have traveled the same road, trying to get themselves recognized as a tribe.

And the particular interest in Seattle, of course, was that Chief Sealth was a Duwamish.

- : One time they stated that if you had two mirrors that fell off the scope of history, and as you know, Native Americans, a long time ago, did not write stories or write books, or write about their history.

What they did, is the way the Indian student thinks, if they tell stories, and you have to listen, hopefully you'll listen to what the elders are saying to you, and you keep it in mind, pass it on, and that's how they recorded the history.

- : This is not unique to the Duwamish, but many tribes across this entire land faced this struggle that there weren't any written records, the governance wasn't as described by European law.

- : One of the issues that we have found, is that the interpretation of material that has been submitted to the Office of Federal Acknowledgment in the past, often was not viewed within the context of the history of the petitioning community.

It was as though the office had a cookie cutter understanding of how all tribes should be able to check off all these boxes in the same way.

Well, because different communities went through different types of history, were impacted in different ways, had different strategies for survival, doesn't negate their legitimacy or the worthiness of their being acknowledged by the federal government.

- : It's like, how do you prove your existence in the 1800s?

It was all oral tradition.

We didn't take notes.

They're saying, well you don't have anything to prove you were there.

Well, no, that's not who we were.

They'll use the fact that you don't have a communal base.

It's like, well, no, you took our property.

How can we have a communal base?

They come up with things that are so absurd, they're saying people don't recognize or acknowledge this, it shouldn't exist.

And my response to that is always, did you do this survey in the Bronx?

Because pretty much anywhere you go, people know the name Chinook.

- : And they said we had some gaps in the '20s.

Or before the '30s, between the '20s and the '30s, and it's like, well, what are you talking about, gaps?

It was illegal for three Indians to stand in the street and talk to each other, let alone have meetings or be politically savvy, you know?

So, we'd have to break the law to fill these gaps.

- : The whole excuse of us not being federally recognized, was because we're not federally recognized.

And so, we need to find, that path needs to stop, we're gonna say okay, we did something wrong, we really screwed up.

You guys obviously aren't all gone, since there's 3,000 of you.

Eddie: Yeah.

Kate: And, we need to go ahead and right this wrong and just make you federally recognized.

- : And you kinda have that back and forth, where, all right, in 1863, they said we're done making treaties with tribes.

Tribes no longer exist.

And then, in 1934, they said, all right.

We were wrong before, now tribes do exist.

The Indian Reorganization Act.

Here's all your tribes, all your communities, you guys will get these benefits because of what happened.

And then in 1954, with the Western Oregon Termination Act, you see, again, they're saying no, we're going to get rid of these communities, get rid of these tribes that have been established already.

'Cause if they weren't established, then they wouldn't be able to name them in the termination act.

And so, again they're saying no, you're no longer a tribe.

- : 1978 is when the federal government got this new recognition process for tribes.

And we thought we could clarify our status by going through that process.

So, the tribe embarked on this huge project and in all it took 23 years to work through that.

- : It was until 2001 before we got our recognition taken care of.

And even along the way, it was a bumpy trail.

- : Near the end, after compiling tens of thousands of pages of documentation, we got the phone call, I got a phone call when I was in Portland, and they told us to immediately, within a week, to get our council, come to Washington DC.

- : I literally finished the vote and ran to catch a cab, raced down to the ceremony, and was there when they celebrated their recognition.

It was one of the last official acts of the Clinton Administration.

And I thought, how wonderful is this?

Our country has righted a historic wrong, we have restored fairness and justice, to a long-deprived people, and we've done it in a very constructive way.

It was a joyful, proud day, for me, as a member of Congress, that our country had done the right thing.

- : It was a very, very, very happy day.

We were happy to have our council back there to witness this signing, and people coming down from the Senate and the House to witness this signing.

But it was short-lived.

It was definitely short-lived.

- : With different people in power, then we got to ruling against us.

- : I questioned the criteria that held it up long enough to get it into the Bush Administration.

Kate: Gary Johnson, who had been our chairman for many years, he had been at the White House at a Lewis and Clark kickoff dinner.

- : And the East Room of the White House was filled with all the tribes, all the recognized tribes that were along the Lewis and Clark trail.

So, we had our big luncheon, we presented the president with gifts.

My wife, Cristy, and I were the two people there representing, I was representing Chinook.

At the end of the work day, someone, perhaps a lower-level person in the office, picked up the phone and gave us a call.

It wasn't any of the officials that we had worked with.

- : Call was is that he turned us down.

- : But it was, obviously, an incredible blow to the tribe.

- : And of course, the feeling with the tribe after that was, I mean it's a rollercoaster ride.

You're up, you're down, you're up, you're down.

We kinda sat around wondering, what are we gonna do?

Where do we go from here?

To have it in your hands, and be preparing for celebration, and then to have it yanked out was terrible.

- : So it was kind of a tough way to get that rolling.

When you're a guest of the president.

- : Imagine that you're told, one day, as a human being, that your people, who have long suffered, had at last achieved the lifetime dream.

A dream that's fair and just.

And then, not long after that.

After the celebration, after the huge sigh of relief, after the elders had achieved what they've hoped for for lifetimes, and lifetimes before that, now some new administration comes in and takes that away, and then says, and you don't get a second chance.

BIA insisted that they could not, as an agency, overturn their own already-overturned decision.

But the Congress had the discretionary authority, we make the laws, actually, that's the constitution, happily.

And that we had an opportunity to do that.

- : We are an non-profit organization that runs on a very small, tiny budget that is smaller than the median household income in Washington state, and we service 3,000 people with this.

So, we don't have the resources, we don't even have the resources to go to court, because we could have gone to court to appeal this, but we didn't have $200,000 to where we could go to court and fight the reconsideration of final determination.

- : Then I resolved that one of my top priorities during my entire time of congress would be to right this wrong.

Because it is a wrong, and it's unjust, and it's a stain on American history and it's a stain on American present, today, this very day.

- : We hired our first lawyers in 1899, it was 1912 that we had a small settlement of money to try to address one of the five treaties that we have.

Then it's 1925, that you have the right to sue the federal government.

Then it's 1958 that we actually have a lawsuit before the Indian Court of Claims.

Then it's 1970 before that one resolves itself.

It's the end of the '70s that this new BIA process is put in place, and it's in the year 2001 that that one resolves itself.

This is too much.

We are watching our people die, and die in mass, in between the starting and ending of these processes that ultimately have got us nowhere.

This has to stop.

- : I made my first trip to Washington DC a year after being on the council.

Had been going back ever since, dealing with members of Congress, the Senate, not only in DC, but here, when they're home.

Dealing with State Legislators, State Senators, County Commissioners, City Administrators, and helping to draft bills that have actually been heard by Congress on our behalf as well as the Duwamish and the Snohomish and the Steilacoom, because it's one of the things that I firmly believe in, all of us are dealing with the same issues, so we all need to be working together.

So if one of us has the opportunity to have a voice somewhere, we need to be the voice for everybody.

- : Delay is consequential.

And delay is consequential legally, and emotionally for these people who feel they have an obligation to their ancestors in a way that many of us don't have that sort of ancestral commitment, but it is heartfelt, and deep and profound for the Chinook people.

So, when delay happens, people pass on with extraordinarily important unfinished business.

- : If I had to say what keeps me going on behalf of our people, you don't have enough time.

(laughs) But the short of it is, for me to do anything less than what I'm capable of doing, to honor all of the people that came before me, that fought all the battles, fought all the struggles, had their land taken away, to being subjected to the keeper of the river, to come back, thinking next fishing season to find canneries built.

And had to scavenge carcasses of fish under the cannery to survive.

So, for me to not do everything within my power would be to dishonor all of our people.

- : For American Indians, it is not enough, to simply have a culture club.

One of the things that I constantly hear as a critique, is, you don't need federal acknowledgement, you can celebrate who you are without it.

They don't understand, first off, we never chose to give up our governments.

We're not immigrants.

Secondly, our tribal identity is a part of who we are.

And within our culture, governing ourselves and maintaining our traditions, which are often attacked.

And until the mid-70s, in many instances, were illegal to practice.

And in some ways, still are, based on whether you have certain protections and privileges because you're listed with the BIA, that that is something that only a tribe that has a certain level of acknowledgement can afford protections for its people.

We struggle, I'm a tribal leader, I struggle to defend my people's right to have access to certain things.

To make certain claims about our own history and who we are.

To have our stories cherished and acknowledged.

The measure of what a tribe is, sadly, in the minds of many Americans, is whether the United States says it is.

- : When the Port of Seattle was doing construction projects, years ago, they unearthed a number of artifacts that date to the Duwamish occupation of this area.

And, for years, those resided with the Duwamish Tribe and after the long house was built, a number of them were on display there, proudly so, as the port decided that they wanted a different arrangement, the Duwamish didn't have the legal standing to be the permanent custodians of that in the eyes of the court.

That would not have happened, had the Duwamish been a legally recognized tribe.

- : In the late '60s and early '70s, there was a neighborhood that was actually here.

And the port came in and condemned it all, because they were gonna build this big facility here, which would have gone all the way out to the end of Kellogg Island, and would have been completely paved, and would have been a container port or something like that 'cause that's what the port does.

As they were clearing the houses that were there, we were notified by an anonymous source, that they were running into archeology.

And our tribal chair, Cecile Hansen, came out to the site, and some of our council people came out to the site, and we saw what they were talking about.

And what happened was, is that the Port of Seattle actually started bulldozing even faster.

Cecile stood in front of bulldozers to stop them, while we were waiting for the University of Washington and the Corps of Engineers to get here to identify it as an archeological site.

As soon as it's identified as an archeological site, work has to stop.

- : And as a result, we end up, today, with a park across the street from where the current Duwamish long house resides.

And this long house, resides on ancient land called ah-puss.

- : Because of the importance of this park, and for its habitat and all kinds of other reasons, it was our ancestors that reached up and stopped development.

Because they're the only ones that could have done it at that time.

- : Sdzidzilalitch is right down here, today.

Sdzidzilalitch is an Indian village that's right down by our ferry terminals.

It's right down by what we call, the big bore, the birth of this great big earth boring machine, has now stopped.

It stopped right near the village of Sdzidzilalitch.

So all of that stuff, when I say our ancestors are here, they're here, they're all over the place.

- : They literally don't even have the legal status to be able to be custodians of their own physical remains.

- : So, we become recognized.

That treaty comes back into law, and that means that the federal government has to do those things.

Now, you know, that would be an exciting thing, that would be a very exciting thing.

It also would give us standing at the table, for anything that happens down here.

Right now, Duwamish Tribe is part of the Park Coalition, with DRCC, which gives them a place at the table.

But it's not the same as Muckleshoot or Suquamish, who have a real place at the table, just for them, because they have a special relationship with the EPA.

- : The super fun site, on the river now, is because of 100 years of industrial waste that had been dumped into the rivers and are in the sediments.

So, the whole idea today, is to remove the polluted sediments from the river.

30 years ago, 40 years ago, it was the industries that were the biggest polluters down here.

Today, it's everybody.

And, so that creates a whole new problem, what do you do about that?

And we're working within the communities to make the communities all along, in the water shed, understand that whatever goes down that drain is gonna come into the river.

- : When I look at it as a tribal member, without a river there isn't a people, and without a people, there isn't a river.

- : We're not grouped together like you would think people are grouped together in these tight pieces of land called reservations, so we make a living, we look just like you and I, we go out, we get jobs, we have families, we own houses.

We come together once a year at our long house which is West Marginal Way, 4705 West Marginal Way.

So we still come together.

We sing our songs.

And then we go out, and in the ancient times, we would go out and we would pull carrots, we would pull berries, blackberries, all kinds of fruit, and we would get ready for the winter.

But we still do that today.

We gather at the long house once a year, and then we go out and we have jobs.

So in a very real sense, this is what a modern Native American looks like.

- : Cathlapotle is a large Chinookan village located on, what is now, the US Fish and Wildlife Ridgefield Wildlife Refuge, near Ridgefield, Washington.

- : It was right in a strategically placed, at the intersection of all these water ways and all these highways for Chinook people.

- : And in other fur trade era accounts, the site is mentioned and people stop to fit it at the Cathlapotle, so it played a role in the fur trade in the area.

- : Lewis and Clark wrote about it and they visited, and they said that it had 900 people living in 14 houses, and two of the houses were 50 feet wide and 200 feet long, just huge houses.

- : Anan Raymond, the Fish and Wildlife archeologist took the stance, that even though the Chinook were not recognized, we would treat the as though, with our process and our work, we would treat them as though they were recognized.

- : That relationship with Doctor Ames, the US Fish and Wildlife service, where the village site there is located, led to the recreation of a Chinook house.

Man: We built the house to be a replica.

And we blessed the site, we blessed the house.

And eventually, the house, right away the house was not a replica, it was the modern of Chinook houses.

It's a house that we use for winter gatherings or ceremonies.

And just like our canoes and everything else, just like our ancestors believed, we feel that that house has a soul, that house needs to be taken care of, that house needs to have fires lit in it.

So we do that today, and we bring that house to life.

- : People do suggest that, oh what's the cost to the country?

What's the cost to the government?

What I would say is, what's been the benefit to this country and the government for acquiring our lands, without any payment, without any consideration at all for the aboriginal people here.

- : It was across the United States, where the government promised these things in trade for millions of acres that tribes gave and paid for in advance, for the services the tribes are supposed to be getting now.

And when the government is reneging on those, they are not keeping up their legally binding agreements with tribal nations here in the United States.

And that should be considered just as much a violation as if they were not keeping an agreement with Mexico or Canada, their neighbors.

So, for people to think that tribes are trying to milk the government, or be dependent on the government, it's a lack of awareness that they have, considering the treaties, and again, the millions of acres the tribes gave.

- : How much wealth has come, in terms of resources, from the water here, from the hills, from our mud flats?

It's tremendous.

And the cost associated with recognizing the Chinook Indian Nation is a fraction of the amount of money that had been extracted or has been extracted from this territory.

- : We are survivors, and we are trying to keep the government accountable to what they've committed to.

So there you have the division that the government has created again, and the concerning scarcity.

Is there going to be enough?

That's always the question, is there gonna be enough?

And then change is a challenge, and there's the fear of what will be taken away.

(slow string music) - : So, the political climate towards, not just the Chinook, but tribes from here to the east coast, from Canada to Mexico, is the same.

You go back there, and for a lack of a better way or term, you get a lot of lip service.

You get back there, you tell them your story, and they sympathize with you, but then when you try to get them to do something, they're very reluctant to do it.

Which is frustrating, it can get aggravating.

But you just have to continue through that.

- : If you look around the world, various government entities have used different source of definitions to erase and extinguish or fail to recognize aboriginal communities.

There's no trade list whereby you can identify who aboriginal people are.

And if you do that, you inherently extinguish some, and you miss some, and you disqualify some.

We are now in a period around the world, where indigenous populations are increasing rapidly in relation to other populations.

And historically, they were pushed into areas that weren't profitable, into mountains, and some of those areas are now places where resource extraction is hoped for.

Industry wants to go now into those marginal areas where indigenous peoples were pushed a century or two centuries ago.

And so, it's inconvenient to have those people.

- : The United Nations' Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is an important document.

It's a goal of all nations and signatories across the world, to basically promote the self-determination of native peoples.

And so, indigenous peoples, whether it's in South America or North America or elsewhere, all have this document that the world leaders have signed onto to promote self-determination.

- : This is our place in the world.

The United Nations said indigenous people have a right to exist in their territory.

They have a right to access the resources, even profit from the resources of their own aboriginal territory.

- : And so it's a worldwide movement, and it's something that, while aspirational, is something that sometimes actually results in real-life decision making and also real-life recognition of tribes.

- : Well all over the world are aboriginal people, are people who are potentially aboriginal people.

Some communities don't wanna be aboriginal people.

Historically some communities hid their aboriginality because they became the subjects of discrimination or violence.

- : Those of us who remained in many of our ancient ancestral areas, remained under hostile governments.

Remained where states wanted to undo any entanglements with tribes that had been the possessors of the lands that they now claimed.

And so, they changed what the definition of Indian was.

For example, in Delaware, which is where many of our people are, from my tribe, the definition of Indian changed a few times.

It, at one point, was a person who was living in the woods and primarily ate deer meat.

That became the legal definition of Indian.

So my ancestors, who had been converted to Christianity, perhaps were living in European-style homes, even though they maintained their communities, and we can prove this, raised chickens and enjoyed pork chops, suddenly, legally, they weren't Indians.

Another way that Indians identity was changed, is that for many, you could not be both Indian and Christian.

These were two different things that you might legally, kind of, be called a "praying Indian", but when you became a Christian and took up residence and went to a church, and you were baptized, you cease to be an Indian and you became a mulatto.

Or a free person of color.

And these terms didn't necessarily mean that you had a particular ancestry, either white or black, plus Indian, but it just was a catch-all, because you can no longer be viewed as an Indian because now you were baptized as a Christian.

So, in many ways, you see that there's this administrative change of the references of people.

No longer were they called by the tribal name, they were called by some nickname that was imposed, maybe for the area that they lived in.

And, in the changing of those names, those identifiers, in official records, it was a form of administrative genocide.

Where these communities were no longer viewed as Indian by the states in which they live.

And the reason that they did not actively fight that, is we have to remember, that in the early 1800s, it became illegal to be Indian east of the Mississippi for many areas in this country.

It was legal to shoot Indians if they were not where they're supposed to be, by definition of the local authorities of the state.

So, we would up being lost to the pages of history.

And our communities, even though they can be identified as continuing, and the family names repeat, and you see who they were, and maybe prior to a certain time they were called Indians, and now suddenly they're not anymore, it's a form of writing us off, of saying that we're extinct.

We've gone the way of the dinosaurs in certain regions of the country, apparently, simply because someone used the power of a pen to erase us.

- : I went with a group of native people of the Fraser River to Papua New Guinea, to a community there.

And living on the southeast Papua New Guinea, in Oro Province.

And, they didn't really, the concept of being indigenous or aboriginal was one that they didn't know about, really.

But all over the world are non-recognized people.

The one estimate in the US at one point, was that there was 250,000 people who were members of non-recognized tribes.

- : The federal government is increasingly, in various ways, in small ways, changing the definition of what it means to be Indian so that many of the regulations that used to include all American Indians, suddenly now are including only federally recognized American Indians.

And there was recently a Supreme Court decision that further divided Indian country between those that were recognized during the era of the Indian Reorganization Act in 1934, and those that were subsequently recognized.

The federal government takes small steps to slowly subdue and reduce our sovereignty.

And for those tribes that don't immediately feel affected, they often, sadly, will act as though it's not really an issue, and if you were really who you say you were, you wouldn't have this problem.

And then what they don't realize, is the ground is being swallowed up from under them, bit by bit.

- : One of the big problems for native peoples, aboriginal peoples of North America, is, even for recognized tribes, is the way in which they're understood to be such.

And one of the ideas that came in in the late 19th century in particular, in the US, has snuck into Canadian thinking, even though, in theory, it isn't part of it, is the idea of blood quantum, of the percentage of blood from ancestors.

And, the problem is, well there's two things.

One is the blood quantum from your own tribe is one, and the other is blood quantum from native people generally.

- : And as you know, across the nation, tribes are beginning to realize that blood quantum is a really dumb way just to determine if you're an Indian or not because the fact that, of course, your children are going to marry somebody else, and as we all become, our world becomes smaller.

- : It's really a threat to native North America because it means, with gradual diminution throughout marriage and so forth, it means that many descendants will not be able to claim recognition as individuals and possibly tribes will shrink, and some tribes may disappear entirely.

It's a real horrible threat.

- : If we talk about the identity, everyone knows that Chief Seattle was both Duwamish and Suquamish.

He has a parent from one tribe, a parent from the other tribe.

That wasn't unusual, prior to treaty time.

- : In ancient times, you became part of the tribe if somebody extended their loving arms around you and made you part of their family, then you were part of the tribe.

In more modern times, because of the regulations imposed by the federal government upon a racial standard that is alien to us, the concept of blood quantum has risen.

- : So, clearly, the geographic boundaries, the cultural boundaries of those tribes, had a flexibility.

And part of what's going on here, is you have the United States trying to impose, for purposes of their negotiations, or for purposes of treaties, sort of rigid boundaries.

Clearly, it was in the interest of the United States to compartmentalize people, to try to reduce the number of independent sovereign entities that existed.

- : The blood quantum standard becomes something that is a strengthening point.

It's like trying to hold on to a sharp knife by grabbing it by the blade, and trying not to get cut.

My tribe is a blood quantum tribe.

And the reason it's a blood quantum tribe is partially because it enables us to stand against so many of the federal tribes who say we are not who we claim to be.

However, as a tribal leader, I know that within my own tribal council and within the other councils within our confederation, it is an issue.

Because ultimately, none of us, in future generations, will be able to maintain that level of blood quantum.

I'm aware of small communities where they can't maintain it without putting themselves of jeopardy, health wise.

So it is a challenge, it's a double edged sword.

Hopefully, one day, it'll be unnecessary.

But that's been imposed.

And in some senses, for some communities, it becomes a necessary evil so that they can better preserve their identity in the face of those who claim they are not who they say they are.

- : It's even a topic beyond itself.

It's really a topic about how we recognize people.

How the state operates.

How relations should be.

So it's interesting, if you look at the most insecure of all groups to see their circumstances, it may be the best way to look at how we should try to look at the future.

- : So many people don't know what's happening.

They don't know that history is repeating itself, in small ways, across the country, that the indigenous people in this land are losing ground, having their rights denied, are suffering through over racism or are dealing with the denial of status, the loss of lands and their lives, even today, it's not being told.

And, more people need to hear the story.

- : Again, going back to this idea that people say, and I've heard it many times, it was a long time ago, get over it.

Well, no.

This is an obligation that we're carrying from our ancestors.

We are the survivors.

The hell that our ancestors went through to get us to today, deserves the kind of work that we're putting in today.

Everyday, when my wife and I look at our kids, we realize how fortunate it is that our grandparents survived to get us to today.

- : What are our angles?

What can we do?

And, of course, there is the thing that we've all gone through, the federal recognition process, which was pretty skewed.

And, we went through it successfully, only to have it overturned.

Then there was the thought of a lawsuit, like I said, the Samish Tribe, they cleared the path.

It looked like the lawsuit would be a good way to go, but we're a poor tribe, we don't have a lot of revenue.

- : So, what we're really doing, is we are sending a letter day to the president, with supporting documentation, regarding our history, our fight for recognition, our previous work with any number of agencies of the federal government, treaties, court cases.

We're putting everything that we think's important in a letter, each and every day.

The letter that we're sending daily goes to the president.

But, the letter we're sending daily, goes to 100 media outlets, each and every day.

We're seeing, right now, the kind of momentum growing that we'd really hoped to see.

It's taken to 80 some days in, to really see it growing.

But all of a sudden, we've got media reaching out to us, wanting to do the in-depth reporting, wanting to tell this story.

Man: Seattle's really an amazing place to ask some of these questions, because it's one of the few cities in North America, really, that sells itself on the image of native peoples.

- : Judge Coughenour had reversed the denial decision that the BIA made with respect to the Duwamish, that's probably one of the very few times that's ever happened.

He found that the failure to consider the 1994 rules, when the decision was made, was arbitrary and capricious.

We have been waiting for the BIA to respond to that remand order, and they did this summer.

In the same week, the first week of July, the BIA came out with a new set of recognition rules.

Those recognition rules were based on the BIA's understanding that even the 1994 rules were not fair to tribes that were seeking recognition.

Yet, in the same week, the BIA came out with these new 2015 rules, they denied the Duwamish.

We find it remarkable, amazing, that in the same week that the new rules came out, that the Duwamish were denied recognition under the soon-to-be outdated rules.

- : And I have all the tribes members in the last 40 years, which was Samish and Snoqualmie and Snohomish and the Cowlitz and the Chinook, and some of these tribes got recognized.

And here we are, if you look at the Point Elliott Treaty, we're the first party on the treaty!

And we're still fighting since we signed that treaty in 1851, there's something wrong here.

There's something wrong here.

- : The Duwamish would be the only tribe not to get the benefit of the new rules.

They designed the two, so that in their minds, the new rules would not take affect until after the denial of this recognition.

And somehow concluded that because this was a remand, that the Duwamish were not entitled to the benefits that all the other pending applications got, of the 2015 rules.

- : I used to race motorcycles, and I've got lots of scars, I've got lots of broken bones, and all of that pales compared to the pain that's felt with the BIA said, oh, by the way, you're not recognized.

So, it's not just something that happens here today, it's not just us here today, it's all of the people that came before us, it's all of the people that are coming after us.

The pain is concentrated from all of those down to this present time.

It hurts a whole lot more than a simple cut or gash or broken bone.

- : You can really make a fair decision about recognition without understanding the life of the tribe for the last 20, 25 years.

What a tribe is doing at the time that the decision is being made, is highly important.

What is their role in the community?

What's the political role of the tribe?

All those are really important considerations, and yet, the Duwamish were not given that opportunity.

They have a long house now, along the shores of the Duwamish River, in their ancestral homelands.

It's been a focal point for all kinds of activities, and yet, as far as the BIA's concerned, that doesn't exist.

The BIA also continues to take the position that the Duwamish Tribe today, is what they call, a claims organization.

In 1925, this tribe formed a legal entity under the laws of the state of Washington.

They filed suit.

They were fighting to pursue their treaty rights, just as they are now.

The courts of the United States recognized the Duwamish Tribe as a party who could bring claims for breach of those contractual promises.

And they received a judgment.

A pitifully small judgment.

But all of that says to me, that the Duwamish Tribe that exists today, is legally recognized as the organization that signed a treaty with the United States, and that their consistent effort has been to see that the promises of that treaty were fulfilled.

- : Our next step for the Duwamish, is to have court action.

And so, our attorneys are working on that.

These are important decisions that have to be made.

- : Here is a tribe that signed a treaty with the United States, they didn't bargain for the bureaucracy of the BIA, they signed a treaty with specific promises.

And the United States courts have said those promises weren't kept.

When the courts of the United States recognize the tribe, post-1925, as a party, that's, to us, a recognition of the tribe.

(tribal music) - : Well, the Duwamish, I mean they signed their treaty, got put on a reservation, said they'd be taken care of, starved for a year, and decided they were gonna move back into their own area.

The Chinook, we moved off into the Willapa Bay, and we're gonna honor our treaty.

And of course they didn't give us anything that they said they were going to either.

I think when people look at tribes, and they look at the, they always think that they're all different and so forth.

But with the Duwamish and the Chinook, and our story and recent history, going through federal recognition, getting it pulled away, and then having to decide what to do, our stories are so much alike.

And it's good that folk see that two tribes are being treated this way, especially in the northwest.

Man: And so they're all still here.

All the ancestors are still here in spite of all of the industry that you see here behind us, the river still flows, the people are still here, and the air still smells good.

It's a good day.

Man: We are here right now.

We've been here.

And we're going to be here.

But it's really a matter of respect.

Cecile: I think that if we are restored, I think that I have done my job.

I hope that this will be a stepping stone for all tribes.

Not only the Duwamish, the people of the inside, but for all tribes who struggle trying to prove who they are.

- : And I've heard it said, that a single arrow can be broken quite easily, but if you took 550 arrows and bound them together as all the federally recognized tribes supporting each other, it'd be awfully hard to break, the strength of all of those people working together.

So yes, my cousin Cecile, I agree with her totally.

Man: I'm not speaking from my own point of view.

I'm telling you what, and I'll name the people, satuwanux said to me.

I'm telling you what Xakum said to me.

Whoever it is, the elders that were very influential people in our lives, I want their words and their ideas to carry forward and be what carries the community forward.

Man: But that's, to me, it's all about choice.

So, do we choose to help our people?

- : And I just hope and pray that God the creator, will allow us to have recognition.

- : I do suffer from a terminal disease.

I've known this for years.

I choose to ignore it to the best of my ability because every day I have here is a blessing.

Every day I have here allows me to do something more for someone else.

- : If you know something is right and you know something is wrong, and you allow the wrong to be perpetuated, and you don't restore the right, then you're culpable.

And we have an opportunity, subtle and small on the grand scheme of things, but profoundly important to the people whose lives have been affected, and to their ancestors, and to our future.

Do we wanna be the kind of country that says something really wrong was done a long time ago, something very, fundamentally unjust, and we knew it, now.

At the time, times were different, but now we know it.

And at virtually no cost and no sacrifice, we can set something right that was done wrong, but we're not going to.

That doesn't speak very well of us, if that's the choice we take.

The average citizen can join in that and draft letters, please do the right thing for the good of this country.

And what a great opportunity that is for our elected officials to say at long last, we've corrected a wrong.

We don't get to do that very often in life.

To look at a historical wrong, and be part of setting that right.

And each individual who wants to participate in that, can do so.

And it may take a while, it may take a lot of voices, but time matters, and if people stay with it, eventually, the great thing about our republic, is that people will listen.

But only if voices are raised.

- : It is important to understand this is the land our creator gave us and promised us, and it is our responsibility to make sure that we can walk with our heads held high upon it.

- : It's really hard to think that for this many generations, we're still positive about it, but we are.

It is the righteous fight.

And as far as my family's concerned, or any other tribal members, you can't have a better righteous fight.

So we continue that fight.

- : I do not need the federal government to tell me who I am.

I do not need them to tell me where I came from.

I do not need them to tell me what my culture is, where my family comes from, where we need to go.

And I don't even really wanna hear it from them.

But what I do need from them is that piece of paper that they should have signed and taken care of in 1851 that would have allowed our people to be provided for all these years.

So, to me, personally, if they wanna say they're sorry, take care of our people.

(tribal drum music)