Western Washington tribe could get back 72 acres of old-growth forest under congressional bill

The Quinault Indian Nation could soon help manage one of the last old growth forests in Washington state, which was once part of its reservation — before the land was sold to non-Native townspeople, then later held by the federal government.

A new congressional bill introduced by U.S. Rep. Derek Kilmer (D-WA) would give those 72 acres of land, located in Grays Harbor County, back to the tribe.

“The forced breakup of our reservation erased one of the foundations of our way of life, our view that the land and waters of our homeland were for communal use by all. This legislation will help right a historic wrong,” said Guy Capoeman, president of the Quinault Indian Nation, in a press release.

Tribal representatives say they hope to use the land to educate others on historical preservation, hunting, canoe carving, and other traditional ecological knowledge. They also say they wouldn’t harvest the old-growth cedar forest for commercial use, but would harvest around the edges of the potential preserve.

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If they did cut down an old-growth cedar it would be to build a canoe or a story pole, said Dave Bingaman, director of the Quinault Division of Natural Resources.

“We'll take a tree out every once in a while, but because it takes thousands of years to grow those trees, we're not going to take them all out in a hurry. We want some remnants left,” he said.

If the tribe were to get this land, it would join five similar parcels on the reservation used for cultural heritage, he added.

“This legislation will help restore the Quinault Indian Nation’s original reservation lands under the Treaty of Olympia of 1865 – ensuring the Nation can preserve its ancestral lands,” Kilmer said in a press release.

The land in Kilmer’s bill was sold by tribes to non-Native settlers and logging businesses during the “allotment and assimilation era,” a federal effort to diminish tribal sovereignty and force Indigenous people to abandon their cultures following the passage of the Dawes Act in 1887.

“There's a famous – or infamous – quote from President Teddy Roosevelt… he called the Dawes Act ‘a mighty pulverizing [engine] to break up the tribal mass’. And he was referring to the tribal land base,” said Monte Mills, a professor and director of the Native American Law center at the University of Washington School of Law.

“The result of that was that after allotments were made, there was surplus land on many reservations that could be open to non-Indian homesteaders,” he added.

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The Quinault Indian Nation now owns approximately 48% of the original acreage of the reservation, according to Kilmer. They’ve spent a century working to buy up land back after the fragmentation of their treaty lands, Capoeman said.

“The Quinault Indian Nation Land Transfer Act helps fulfill the promise the United States government made to the Quinault Nation when signing the treaty of Olympia in 1856, the promise that the lands set aside for the Quinault Indian Reservation will always belong to the Quinault Nation,” he said.