Richard Arlin Walker
ICT
SAN JUAN ISLANDS, Washington — Visitors on the ferry to the San Juan Islands sail past forested islands on an emerald sea en route to their destination.
These are ancestral marine highways traveled for millennia by the First Peoples of these lands and waters — the Lhaq’temish (Lummi), the Lekwungen (Songhees), the W̱SÁNEĆ (Saanich), the Xws7ámesh (Samish). While the San Juan Islands have certainly changed since the mid-1850s when non-Native settlers began arriving, this archipelago in the Salish Sea between Canada and the United States is still very much an Indigenous place.
Lisa Nash Lawrence’s family is Swinomish and S’Klalakamish, or Mitchell Bay, and fishes these waters just as their ancestors did before contact. The family also fishes a reef net site off Stuart Island that was originally owned by her great-great-great-grandmother. Reef netting is unique to the San Juan Islands and involves guiding migrating salmon along an artificial reef of nets decorated with kelp fronds and sea grasses leading to a large scoop net placed between two canoes.
“It definitely has a lot of Indigenous history — you know, kind of a nice mix of different clans and families and tribes,” Lawrence said of the islands. “And we’re still here.”
A visit to the San Juan Islands is an unparalleled cultural experience. (The beach walks, forest hikes, golfing, cycling and kayaking are very cool, too.)
Let’s start the tour …
SAN JUAN ISLAND
Visitors arriving in Friday Harbor will look to their right and see “Interaction,” the Coast Salish house posts and crossbeam carved by Susan Point, Musqueam, and installed in 2004 in the park overlooking the marina. The monumental work tells of the interdependence of humans and animals and serves as a reminder of the responsibility to be good caretakers of the environment that sustains us.
The seafood market in Friday Harbor Marina is owned by Lummi Nation fisherman Jay W’tot Lhem Julius and features Native-caught fish and crab. Julius, a former Lummi Nation chairman, is president of Se’Si’Le (pronounced saw-see’-law, which means “our grandmother”), which develops protective management strategies for sacred sites, resources and landscapes.
The Whale Museum, 62 First St., has exhibits about the islands’ resident orca pods — the orca is known by the island’s First Peoples as qwe’lhol’mechen (pronounced kw-ol-ma-chen, which translates to “our relatives who live under the sea”) and the challenges they face in their environment. Marvel at the whale skeletons on exhibit, listen to recordings of whale sounds, and watch films about marine wildlife. Visit the gift shop and help support whale research. (Tip No. 1: Admission is free on Thursdays. Tip No. 2: During summer, visit The Whale Museum’s research station at Lime Kiln State Park. Located in a 1914 lighthouse, researchers document the movements of orcas and monitor boater behavior in the presence of these endangered animals).
Also on First Street is Arctic Raven Gallery, a leading Northwest Washington gallery featuring Indigenous art from the Northwest, the Northwest Coast and Alaska.
The avant garde San Juan Islands Museum of Art, 540 Spring St., is presenting “Shapeshifters” — a major exhibition of contemporary Northwest Coast Indigenous art — through Sept. 15. The exhibit showcases the works of contemporary Indigenous artists in argillite, bronze, cedar, glass, multimedia and serigraphs.
The title “Shapeshifters” embodies the Northwest Coast Indigenous peoples’ connection to — and respect for the cleverness of — the Raven. It also reflects the peoples’ ability to persevere and adapt to change for millennia. “Indigenous stories tell us that Raven created mankind on the Northwest Coast,” said exhibit curator Lee Brooks, owner of Arctic Raven Gallery. “His people’s art transcends the human experience. Raven always outwits the moment. He transforms to meet life’s challenges and shapeshifts to create new solutions for today’s dilemmas.”
Brooks added, “We are all shapeshifters. All the featured artists have transformed to meet challenges unique to their cultures. Susan Point survived residential school to become a prominent Coast Salish artist. Rande Cook, hereditary chief of the Ma’amtigila, has chosen this moment to reestablish his people among the ghosts of their ancestors on British Columbia’s Village Island. Tim Paul keeps Nu-chah-nulth culture alive after many of his people were washed out to sea by floods and had to rebuild their village three times over the centuries. Christian White raised the tallest totem pole in Haida Gwaii after a 100-year hiatus.”
The San Juan Historical Museum, 405 Price St., is located on the site of the 1894 James King Farm — originally 445 acres — and features the restored farmhouse, carriage house, root cellar and milk house. Other buildings include the county’s first jail, which was originally located downtown near the courthouse; and a log cabin built in 1891. The museum collection includes items gifted by the Samish Indian Nation during the repatriation of an ancestral canoe.
Also on the museum grounds is the San Juan Island Museum of History and Industry, which has interactive exhibits on the industries that shaped San Juan Island: salmon fishing, farming, logging and limestone quarrying and processing. The fishing exhibit gives visitors a sense of walking on a dock while viewing a multitude of stunning interpretive panels. (Tip: Bring lunch from the farmers market or a local store or restaurant, and eat outside on the park-like museum grounds.)
British Royal Marines were stationed at English Camp from 1860-1872 while U.S. and British diplomats worked to resolve their nations’ competing claims to the islands. When the British arrived, this place was Pe’pi’ow’elh (pronounced pepi-ow-eth), a Coast Salish village and site of a longhouse that accommodated 600 people. The British disassembled the longhouse and used the materials to build their encampment, according to the National Park Service, and used the extensive shell middens as material for pathways.
The camp is now part of San Juan Island National Historical Park. Several buildings from the military occupation have been preserved and are open to the public. A story pole and two story boards — carved by Tsartlip artist Charles Elliott and Lummi artist Jewell James — were installed on the grounds in 2016 and tell the story of reef net fishing.
U.S. troops were stationed during the same period at American Camp on a windswept camas prairie overlooking the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Griffin Bay. The American Camp Visitors Center is a must-see: Interior displays tell the story of the island’s First Peoples, their lifeways and their continued connection to the island. A canoe by Lummi Nation carver Dean Washington is suspended from the ceiling. A wall mural depicts pre-settlement Coast Salish life here. In front of the mural are displays of seven canoe paddles carved by artists from the seven tribal nations with historical ties to the island, and an interpretive panel with objects related to Indigenous building methods, carving and resource harvesting. Visitors can press buttons to hear the words for those objects spoken in the Indigenous languages of the island.
On permanent display at Jackson Beach — near Friday Harbor and across Griffin Bay from American Camp — is a large Jewell James sculpture of Tahlequah, the orca who captured the world’s attention in 2018 when she carried her deceased calf for at least 17 days. The sculpture calls attention to the plight of the orca population, which marine scientists say is struggling to survive amid pollution and diminished salmon runs.
Lime quarrying began at Roche Harbor in the 1880s when She-Kla-Malt was leader of a Lummi village nearby on Speiden Channel; his descendants include Deborah Parker, member of the Tulalip Tribes tribal council. The company town had an international workforce of Coast Salish, British, Irish, Italian and Japanese. They quarried, processed, bagged and barrelled lime and limestone used in agriculture, construction and steel making. The lime and limestone they produced were used to build Navy ships of war and rebuild San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake.
The town has been a resort and marina since the 1950s. Walk the docks, hike the trails, play bocce ball, and get a day pass for the Olympic-size outdoor pool. Don’t miss the San Juan Islands Sculpture Park, a 20-acre nature preserve with 150 unique creations by emerging and world-renowned sculptors. Dog friendly.
LOPEZ ISLAND
In the spring and summer, visitors might see Coast Salish canoes arriving on Lopez Island during the Gathering of Eagles or the Intertribal Canoe Journey, two gatherings of Northwest Indigenous canoe cultures. (Gathering of the Eagles took place this year May 17-26; the Canoe Journey passed east of the islands July 23-25.) . Part of Lopez Island is within historical Samish territory and the Samish Nation and the Tulalip Tribes own lands here.
The island is relatively flat and is popular for cycling. Spencer Spit State Park is 138 acres and has camping sites and two miles of hiking trails. Two sand spits enclose a saltwater lagoon that is a migratory stop for great blue herons, kingfishers and other water birds. Explore Agate Beach Park for tide pools and rock climbing at low tide, or kayak in Fisherman Bay and along the rugged coastline.
SHAW ISLAND
Shaw Island pays tribute to reef netting, which continues today in Reef Net Bay. The bay was renamed by the state in 2017 on the recommendation of islanders to replace the former name, which included a racial slur. You can see tribal and non-tribal fishers still using this traditional method of fishing — using boats, though, not canoes — in the bay. A reef net boat is on display on the grounds of the Shaw Island Historical Museum.
Launch a kayak at Shaw Island County Park, which has forested campsites and a sandy beach on Indian Cove. That’s Canoe Island in the middle of Upright Channel and, beyond, Lopez Island.
ORCAS ISLAND
There is much to see on Orcas Island, a 57-square-mile horseshoe-shaped island with hamlets, beaches, forests, harbors, streams and mountain lakes. Mount Constitution, at 2,409 feet reportedly the second-highest island mountain in the 48 contiguous states, offers panoramic views of the surrounding islands, the Cascade Mountains, the Olympic Mountains, and Victoria, British Columbia.
But there is much here that tells of the collision of cultures that began in the 1850s.
The Orcas Island Historical Museum houses some 6,000 objects, documents and photographs. Its collection includes hand-hewn reef net anchors taken from a Lummi family’s reef net site; an elder said her family never relinquished ownership of them.
Rosario Resort, whose centerpiece Arts and Crafts-style mansion was built in 1906-1909 by former Seattle mayor and shipbuilder Robert Moran, sits atop a Lummi ancestral village site on Cascade Bay. (Moran acquired the land from the Newhall brothers, who operated a lumber mill there. Moran is widely recognized as having been a good caretaker of the land. He donated several thousand acres here for the first state park, which bears his name; and was a good friend of naturalist John Muir.)
The trails on Madrona Point, a 30-acre forested promontory in Eastsound where madrona trees meet a rocky shoreline, were formerly open to the public. But the Lummi Nation, which owns the point — an ancestral village and burial site known as Ts’el-xwi-sen — closed it to the public in 2007 because of misuse.
Julius, the former Lummi chairman, views Orcas Island the way he does all of the islands within Lummi’s historical territory — through an Indigenous lens. The island’s name is Swa’lax. The ancestors here live on in sacred songs, oral histories and in the spirit of place, he wrote in an Earth Day Message for Friends of the San Juans, a local environmental protection organization.
“Like other members of the Lummi Nation, I am often out on these waters in the company of our ancestors and with our elders scha’enexw (‘the salmon’), qwe’lhol mechen (‘the killer whales’), and all our other relations in Xw’ullemy (‘the Salish Sea’),” he wrote.
Julius and his nonprofit, Se’Si’Le, is reacquiring sacred lands on Swa’lax for the Lummi Nation: six acres on Orcas Island’s West Sound in 2020, and several properties in 2024 next to Madrona Point.
Julius hopes a living cultural center at Madrona Point, currently an idea, would help residents and visitors see the island through an Indigenous lens, too — a bridge to understanding. “My thought around it is education,” Julius said. “That’s my hope. Madrona Point is off-limits because it’s a sacred place. [A living cultural center] could help educate folks and be utilized as that space that a lot of people desire and are craving.”
Bottom line: Visit the islands’ natural sites. Hike in a forest, walk on a beach, golf scenic courses, enjoy farm-to-table foods, kayak along the coastline, swim in a mountain lake. You can book your trip via the San Juan Islands Visitors Bureau. But, as on every island, leave nothing but footprints.
“Tread lightly and stay on the trails,” said San Juan Island’s Lawrence. “Conservation agencies have put up signage to educate and inform people so they don’t tromp on sensitive native plants or, you know, the important things that you just don’t notice are there. Make sure you follow the rules and don’t go off trail. It’s sacred land.”