This site organizes sources and instruction for search and research activities connected with First Peoples of the world and the Pacific Northwest. It remains a work in progress as we begin with the Pacific Rim and the Pacific Northwest of the North American Continent and expand from there.
We designed the site to serve as a finding aid to academic and advocacy research. For more information or questions, or help with research, please contact the Research Services support desk in the Evans Library on the Olympia campus, or email Liza R. Rognas
The “House of Welcome” Longhouse Education and Cultural Center is a public service center at The Evergreen State College. Built in collaboration with Northwest tribes, it is the first building of its kind on a public campus in the United States. Evergreen's Native programs began in 1972 when faculty member Mary Ellen Hillaire of the Lummi Tribe founded the Native American Studies program. Hillaire is also credited with having first articulated the need to have a culturally appropriate facility—such as a longhouse—on campus so that people from different cultural backgrounds could teach and learn with each other.
The Gifts Garden—shortened from "Gifts of the First People," consists of several ethnobotanically-oriented habitat and theme areas, and honors the late Skokomish cultural leader, Subiyay, G. Bruce Miller. Subiyay first gave this name to a related garden project on the Skokomish Indian Reservation, and served as a mentor for the garden at the Longhouse as it developed and grew.