INTRODUCTION

Landscape architects are an adventurous lot, ever seeking the essence of a given piece of land, its 'genius loci', in order to activate its power in their designs. Having revealed the landscape's heart, their creations become the manifestations of the land's spiritual essence as it links the lives of its inhabitants. Those landscape architects who choose to explore this essence inevitably find themselves on journeys of varying lengths. Always, there is the promise of revelation and insight.

I was invited to embark on such a journey into Indian lands in the Spring of 1991. Eagerly, I prepared. Where better to discover the ultimate secrets of human relationship with the earth than on the lands of North America's 'first people'? Mythology and romantic tales encircle these people and their lands. My search for cultural understanding opened for me the ideal avenue that would lead towards the achievement of a long-held goal: to participate in the harmonious reunification of the earth with its people. Soon, I discovered that, while my skills as a landscape architect were essential in order to perform my services, they were secondary to uncovering the Native American viewpoint that I served. Centuries of mistrust had built towering barriers for me to scale. "The Tulalip Tribal Museum Project" offered me this unique challenge. Its path has taken me in unforeseen directions. Each turn has provided me with ever widening views of that central essence that I sought. The heart of the Native American cultural landscape is elusive. In the absence of maps and unbiased, historical travel logs, I found that my best guides were the people. Their stories held the clues. Tucked away in the Pacific Northwest Collection at the University of Washington Libraries' Special Collections Department I unearthed my first clue in the writings of William Shelton, a member of The Tulalip Tribes with Snohomish lineage, and a story pole carver. In his book "The Story of The Totem Pole" he described the value of storytelling in his family.

"My parents, uncles and great-uncles told me, in days gone by, stories which would create in me the desire to become brave, and good and strong, to become a good speaker, a good leader; they taught me to honor old people and always to do all in my power to help them."1

From the beginning, it was clear that the most valuable investigative skill for me to hone was the simple act of listening--to the winds, the animals, the land and to the people's stories.

The Tulalip Museum Project was an outgrowth of a symposium held in February, 1991, which was organized by Roberta Haines of the Center for Ethnic Studies at the University of Washington. Called 'A Time of Gathering', the symposium brought together representatives of Northwest Tribes to the University of Washington to share their common concerns regarding higher education and the Native American community. They also explored the possibilities of developing a cooperative relationship with the State's institutions of higher learning. It is significant to remember that promises of education and health care for their people enticed the Native American leaders of 1855 to trade their vast territories to the federal government. During the symposium James Donnette, Associate Dean and Director of the College of Architecture and Urban Planning, planted the seeds for an ongoing relationship between The Tulalip Tribes and the University of Washington. Donnette continued to cultivate that mutually beneficial relationship by facilitating the museum project proposals as they evolved and guiding them through the labyrinth of University channels to reality. Here too, with the birth of The Tulalip Tribal Museum Project, began my journey into the heart of the Native American cultural landscape.

This thesis records that journey and the stories that directed it. It is the journey of one woman into the heartland of one tribe in the Pacific Northwest. Nevertheless, I believe that the lessons learned here are of value to other landscape architects as they explore Native American homelands for cultural understanding upon which to build the foundations for their designs of the Native American cultural landscape.

The Tulalip Tribal Museum Project has evolved into a multi phase project which, when completed, will be comprised of five distinct stages:

1) site analysis,

2) research,

3) conceptual site design,

4) conceptual architectural design

5) financial plan design.

The project will enlist a wide range of expertise and include members of: a) four graduate programs at the University of Washington: Landscape Architecture, Architecture, Business Administration, and American Indian Studies, b) Tulalip Tribal members and staff, c) Northwest Native American cultural centers' and museums' directors and staff, and

d) Northwest professional architects and landscape architects.

Listening with the heart

Drumbeat

Listen.......

There! Do you hear them?

Come away from your overaowded city

To a place of eagles

And then perhaps you will hear.

Be still this once;

Hold the yammering of your jackhammer tongue.

Take your stainless steel hands

From the ears of your heart

And listen.

Or have you forgotten how?

They are there yet

Through these hundred centuries

And all your metal thunder

Has not silenced them.

The wind is messenger,

Heed the whispering spirit,

Now....the drums still talk,

From the grizzly bear hills,

Across the antelope plains,

In the veins of your blood:

The heartbeat

Of the Mother Earth.2

Central to good landscape design is the harmonious integration of client perceptions and essence of place. When the landscape architect serves the needs of people whose lifeways are fundamentally different from her own, bridges must be built between the designer's world and that of her client. Crossing that bridge and treading for the first time on the unfamiliar lands of another culture she needs to somehow slip into her clients' skin, seeing their world afresh, with different eyes. Like a visitor in a foreign country, once-familiar sights in the landscape shift out of accustomed focus as their underlying patterns, steeped in centuries of another's experience, hover just outside her grasp of their significance in terms of the landscape. As we began this journey I was warned "You can't design for Native Americans the same way you do for white men."3 How, then, would I access this cultural viewpoint from my place as a member of an alien culture?

Story maps

Slowly, my approach became clear. Although the North American Native traditions are as diverse as their environments that stretch from coast to coast they share a common feature: their traditions are oral. Recently, Native American literature has taken its rightful place alongside that of the great writers of western culture. Native American author, Simon Ortiz, has gathered a select sampling from within the American Indian culture for his anthology of short stories, "Earth Power Coming" Ortiz underscores the significance of songs, prayers and stories when he tells his readers that:

"It is the very experience of life that engenders life. It is the act of perception that insures knowledge. For Indian people, it has been the evolvement of a system of life which insists on one's full awareness of his relationship to all life. Through words derived from one's thoughts, beliefs, acts, experiences, it is possible to share this awareness with all mankind."4

Ortiz expands the meaning of oral tradition to a holistic perception when he explained that:

"Oral tradition is not just speaking and listening, [it is] that whole process which involves a lifestyle. That whole process of that society in terms of its history, its culture, its language, lts values, and subsequently, its literature. So it's not merely a simple matter of speaking and listening, but living that process. And the oral tradition obviously includes everything within it, whether it's spoken about or acted out, or worked out, or how people respond to each other...it is the importance of what your philosophy is, in terms of your identity, what your heritage is, and how that forms, formulates itself in creative expression...."5

Native American knowledge, sacred or mundane, was and still is passed from generation to generation by word of mouth. Storytellers and their tales are held in high regard. It is through their stories that I found my path. Led by the voices of storytellers, ancient and contemporary, I have begun to appreciate a new way of being in the world. Leslie Marmon Silko's poem "The Storyteller's Escape" highlights the significance of the storyteller's art for cultural survival.

THE STORYTELLER'S ESCAPE

The storyteller keeps the stories

all the escape stories

she says 'With these stories of ours

we can escape almost anything

with these stories we will survive."

The old teller has been on every journey

and she knows all the escape stories

even stories told before she was born.

She keeps the stories for those who return

but more important

for the dear ones who do not come back

so that we may remember them

and cry for them with the stories.

"In this way we hold them

and keep them with us forever

and in this way

we continue."6

From the beginning I determined that it was only through the authentic voices of Native American storytellers that I could hear the earth's pulse that poet Carol Snow sings about so lyrically in her poem "Drumbeat". Native American stories from today and yesterday are similar to the Australian Aborigine 'songlines' that serve their owners as guides through the vast Australian landscape.7 They have have led me this far into an understanding of the place that is at the center of the Native American cultural landscape: the circle of kinship. This place is imbued with a wholly integrated sense of being: physical, intellectual and spiritual that began with the simultaneous creation of the world and the individual.8

This thesis explores those places that the storytellers have led me. Like other journeys into unknown regions, mine has involved many side trips that seem to digress from my unknown destination. Rather than mislead, these digressions have afforded me a vantage point from which I can more readily discern my goal: to discover that which is central to the Native American cultural landscape.

Journey overlook

Now at the far end of my journey, I reflect upon my sojourn in Indian lands. A world of depth, vision and color has opened to me. Although I know that with each exploration of unfamiliar Indian lands I will find new patterns and insights reflecting the unique connections between the people and their lands, a basic map that records my journey at Tulalip would be helpful for future trips or for others should they find themselves on similar paths. Figure 1 charts my journey and serves to orient the reader as we travel together through the project's often circuitous pathways.

The experienced traveler's most satisfying trips occur when versed in the culture of the native population. The research component of the trip becomes vital. Appreciating art forms, following local customs, speaking the native language, and studying the past from a local perspective are prerequisites to such understanding. It is the research component of this thesis into the realms of environmental perception, Native American cosmology, literature and history that provides the backdrop against which the museum project and its findings can be projected. Without such cultural steeping the museum project's findings' applicability to other projects is limited. In fact, this author suggests that the approach followed in the Tulalip project and outlined below can serve as a model for cross-cultural design within any cultural context.

Native American poetry leads the reader into Chapter I and the realm of Native American environmental perception. Since the earth/man relationship of a culture affects its environmental perceptions, understanding it with regard to a specific culture is critical. Poets serve as eloquent spokespeople for these perceptions. A discussion of the phenomenological approach to the study of environmental perceptions argues for its application to studies of indigenous peoples' earth/man relationship.

Out of this study of phenomenology emerge questions about the source of such perceptions. Chapter II turns to an exploration of Native American belief systems for an understanding of the cosmological roots for these viewpoints. Within the phenomenological approach to the environment these beliefs that place man in a familial relationship with everything in the environment supports the notion that kinship is the essential value held by Native Americans. Further, through an understanding of those phenomenological relationships its role in their decision-making process is explained. A brief discussion of the nature of Native American belief systems on which their value system is predicated precedes this condusion. This discussion of the Native American's cosmological systems and the role that mythology plays in their culture clarifies, in general terms, Native Americans' unique worldview.

Passing through the natural web of life inherent in Native Amencan perceptions while listening to the storytellers' tales, the reader is asked in Chapter III to consider the application of the Native American worldview to design. The work of Native American architect Richard Hill, "Indian Housing Design Guide", when coupled with the thoughts of American Indian scholar Vine Deloria and those of the late philosopher Joseph Campbell forge a union between belief systems and form which finds expression in the design of the Native American cultural landscape.

Chapter IV provides the reader with a brief overview of federal Indian policies which seem to be critical to landscape architects' understanding of the current reservation conditions as they reflect Native American earth/man relationship. It is necessary to place cultural perceptions within an historical context. Only after one explores the impacts that historical events have had on a people can one appreciate their present conditions and responses. Sometimes, as one journeys through foreign lands, a stranger risks hostile encounters which are inexplicable when considered outside an historical context. While working on the Tulalip project I experienced such hostility borne of an undercurrent of distrust and resentment. Only after Native Americans H. Kwi Tlum Kadim Gobin, Phil Red Eagle and Kate Shanley opened my eyes to the century of pain suffered by the American Indians as a result of United States Indian policy was I able to identify the source of these feelings. The federal government's overt attempt to sever the bonds that connect the Native Americans to their lands has had such disastrous consequences such as the blood spilled at Wounded Knee and less visible effects, though nonetheless disastrous, that are mirrored in the troubling social issues on today's reservations: alcoholism, suicide and poverty. Again, in Chapter IV, the reader is asked to listen to the heart of Native America as it is expressed in the words of her poets William T. Laughing, Peter Blue Cloud and Roberta Whiteman. The chapter concludes with the introduction of a new model for the restoration and preservation of the Native American cultural landscape, the eco-museum.

Chapter V records the emergence of a rekindled Native American spirit with the gathering of Native American community leaders known as the Keepers of the Treasures. This resurgence of efforts aimed at cultural revitalization is expressed in a keystone document by the same name. Further, this chapter places the resurrection of the Native American spirit within a global context, relating American Indians' revitalizing efforts to similar events worldwide. Exemplary designs at U'Mista Cultural Center, in Alert Bay, British Columbia, and at the Makah Research and Cultural Center, in Neah Bay, Washington, are used to illustrate alternative solutions that serve the Native American's cultural revitalization process. Chapter V concludes with a discussion of insights offered by the work of Seattle landscape architects Chuck Warsinske and Johnpaul Jones both of whom have extensive experience serving Native Americans.

Having crossed the threshold into the Native American landscape, guided by the voices of its people in the previous four chapters, the reader is prepared to explore the Tulalip Tribes homelands in Chapter VI. The journey begins with the first phase of the Tulalip Tribal Museum Project, The Tulalip Tribal Museum Site Selection Project. Working in concert with Jim Donnette, Assistant Professor Boykin Witherspoon provided the initial leadership for the museum project at the University.

Through Witherspoon's office I received a research assistantship to work on the project. Fellow graduate student, Sandra Strieby, joined me and we proceeded to conduct a thorough site analysis of the Tulalip reservation. This phase consisted of a ten-week site selection project designed to analyze the 22,000 acres of the Tulalip Reservation. We analyzed a broad range of site features that included the reservation's infrastructure, natural systems, spiritual and cultural features and aesthetic potential. The immediate goal was to identify three or more suitable sites for The Tulalip Tribal Museum while addressing the special social, aesthetic, educational and cultural requirements of such a facility. In addition to a slide presentation, the project document provides thorough documentation of this analysis and a description of the potential sites accompanied by a series of maps created cooperatively with the Tulalips' geographic information systems (GIS) department and the Department of Landscape Architecture.9

Chapter VI continues with a discussion of the second phase of the project, the Tulalip Tribal Museum Project Cultural Center Survey. This phase was conceived by the Tulalip Board of Directors as a means to provide the Board and the general tribal membership with exposure to established Native American cultural centers and museums. The Board funded a research project aimed at obtaining insights and information from existing cultural centers and museums in order to guide their own museum development process.

Assistant Professor John Koepke, of the University of Washington's Department of Landscape Architecture, joined the project team in this second phase. His interest in the use of the land as a sacred resource, through which cultural identity is preserved as it enhances Native American community, dovetailed with the project's goals to analyze and evaluate the landscape design at various Northwest American Indian cultural centers and museums.10 Koepke's Ojibway ancestry and interest in Native American cultural landscape issues strengthened the new alliance between the Tulalips and the University, giving it new depth.

The museum team members for this research project included the Tulalip Tribes' H. Kwi Tlum Kadim Gobin, Sheryl Fryberg, and John Koepke and myself. Together in various combinations we traveled over two thousand miles, visiting seven cultural centers and museums in Washington and British Columbia. A photographic record was kept of these visits which is available as a slide presentation and included in the project document. This. document highlights the essential features of these places with an analysis of their physical plant and organizational structure.11 Appendices to this survey provide a detailed record of each site's response to a given series of questions that relate to the Tulalip Museum's site program.

Concluding Chapter VI is a discussion of work produced by the third phase of the Tulalip project, the site designs for the four museum sites. Assistant Professor John Koepke and I continued to work together to develop the curriculum for The Native American Design Studio. Capturing the Tulalip vision in conceptual site designs for each of the four sites was the focus of this studio. The goals of cross cultural communication and creative functional design drove the approach taken by the members of the studio, with whom Koepke and I worked as a professional team. Design boards and a document were produced for the Tribes which have been presented to the tribal membership for discussion and final site selection. 12

Chapter VII of this thesis records the application of the insights gained throughout the Tulalip project and discussed in this thesis to the design of "A Walk with the Ancestors". Having received a grant from the Department of Natural Resources the Tribes needed a landscape architect to design an historic interpretive walk. Originally conceived by H. Kwi Tlum Kadim Gobin the trail would later become the first step towards the Tulalip Tribes' eco-museum. The value of community participation as a component to design is particularly significant in this process and is discussed at length. This aspect of the process brings it back full circle to the idea of kinship as central to the landscape design of the Native American cultural landscape.

Chapter VIII draws on the many lessons learned throughout the Tulalip project. They support the idea that the circle of kinship is the central concept around which the design of the Native American cultural landscape is formed. This chapter underscores the value of a holistic approach to crosscultural design which looks to the people and their earth/man relationships for guidance throughout the process. The interconnectedness of environmental perceptions, belief systems, historical events, storytelling and design gives rise to a vibrant design process engaged in the formation of the Native American cultural landscape.

The journey begins

Beneath Tall Cedar

East by West

Hebolb

My people sleeping there

At sun rise

Drumming, singing ancient

Welcome songs

Greet early morning mist

On the backs of spawning salmon

Their migratory journey

To the headwaters of the Snohomish

Beneath tall cedar

To the home of the Stillaguamish

The Sauk, Suiattle

The tributaries of the Skagit

Spawning salmon

Their migratory journey

They pause there

Hebolb

Beneath tall cedar

On the banks of the Snohomish 13

On April 10,1991 the tall trees of Skayu Point etched the clear skies over Tulalip Bay whose sparkling waters formed a shimmering aura around the large, proud frame of H. Kwi Tlum Kadim Gobin. Mr. Gobin presided over this first meeting of the "The Tulalip Tribal Museum Project" team from a distance, at the end of the long table laden with fruit and sweets honoring his guests and welcoming them into the private charnbers of The Tulalip Tribes' governing board. As Director of Cultural Resources, Mr. Gobin began this meeting, as he did many subsequent ones, with a welcoming story. His story that day was about the dream held for decades in the hearts of his people, of a place where their cultural heritage could be honored and enlivened with renewed vigor. Gobin spoke of tragic losses, broken promises and the urgent need to move toward the realization of the Tulalip Tribal Museum. He told us about a prophecy that warned of the disappearance of the culture in the seventh generation. Great efforts needed to be expended to sustain it today in order to prevent this from happening. His urgency made it clear to me that this project was a matter of cultural survival. Gobin shared with us his far reaching vision for their museum and challenged us to employ our expertise meet his people's needs to locate a suitable site. He made it clear that their needs would reach far into the University of Washington's human resources, involving the participation of a diverse cross section of disciplines in the project. In addition to Mr. Gobin and ourselves, those in attendance that morning included Kim Rogers and Lita Sheldon from the Tulalip Planning Department, Maureen Hoban adult education coordinator, Lillian Henry from the Grants Department, and Sheryl Fryberg from Human Services Department. We all danced formally around each other that day, careful not to brush one another offensively, wary of unspoken questions and uncertain outcomes.

Questions posed that day continue to drive my search for the essence of these people's relationship with their land. Some questions that arose were: "What is the significance of these opening ceremonial maneuvers?"; "Though we speak the same language, do we share similar understanding?"; "Why do these people, so attuned to the earth, need me to find a place best suited to house their memories?"; 'If this place is meant to carry the story of their ancestors to future generations, where would they, the ancestors, want that place to be?"; and, "What do they think about their land and the lives that they lead on the reservation?"

This meeting marked the beginning. From the outset, I likened this project to a quest for hidden treasure&emdash;the precious place that held within its sacred earth the promise of a resurrected culture, the secret key to a people's much mythologized relationship with Mother Earth, and my own enlightenment. This treasure quest has brought me full cirde to the words of H. Kwi Tlum Kadim Gobin in his poem "Beneath Tall Cedar" and the belief that it is the simple notion of kinship that links these people to the earth, the creatures, the spirits and each other.

1 See William Shelton's The Story of the Totem Pole, p. 2.

2 See 'Drumbeat", a poem by Carol Snow, Seneca of the Iroquois Nation, in New Voices from the Longhouse, p.236.

3 Hank Gobin, personal communication, May 12,1991.

4 See Simon Ortiz, Earth Power Coming. p.vii.

5 See Laura Coltelli, Winged Words p. l04.

6 See Leslie Marmon Silko, Storyteller. p. 247.

7 See Bruce Chatwin, Songlines.

8 See Laura Cobelli, Winged Words. p.105.

figure 1: This map illustrates my journey into Indian lands to discover the heart of the Native Amencan cultural landscape.

9 This document, The Tulalip Tribal Museum Site Selection Project, was written by Roxanne Hamilton with Sandra Strieby in June,l991.

10 John Koepke presented his unpublished paper "Native American Cultural Centers and Museums: Using our sacred resource, the Land, to preserve cultural identity and enhance community" at the Fourth North American Symposium on Society and Resource Management held in Madison, Wisconsin in May of 1992.

11 This document, The Tulalip Tribal Museum Project Cultural Center Survey, was written by Roxanne Hamilton in April, 1992.

12 This docurnent, The Tulalip Tribal Museum Project Site Design, was written in May, 1992. This phase of the project was recently awarded an Honor award by the Washington Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architecture for 1992.

13 See ''Hebolb", a work in progress, by H. Kwi Tlwn Kadim Gobin