We see and embrace our indigenous land ancestors, the First Peoples who for ten thousand years were shaped by and stewarded lands of the Columbia River Basin, the Columbia River Plateau, the Great Basin, and the Northwest Coast—currently known as Oregon and Southern Washington.
They included the Alsea, Applegate, Cayuse, Chetco, Chinook, Clackamas, Clatskanie, Clowwewalla, Coos, Coquille, Cowlitz, Galice, Kalapuya, Klamath, Klickitat, Modoc, Mohawk, Molalla, Multnomah, Nez Perce, Paiute, Santiam, Siletz, Shasta, Siuslaw, Takelma, Tenino, Tillamook, Tolowa, Tualatin, Tututni, Umatilla, Umpqua, Walla Walla, Warm Springs bands, Wasco peoples, Wishram, Yahuskin, and many other unrecognized and lost First Peoples who were part of this land.[i]
We acknowledge the suffering perpetrated against them by white colonizers: from stolen lands, genocide, internment, racism, and separation from ancestral homelands, language, culture, religion, food, and traditions. We vow to uproot colonizing tendencies within ourselves, born from fires of greed, hatred and delusion, in order to reduce harm and realize our accountability to the land and its native stewards.
Today these Peoples are members of the Burns Paiute Tribe; Celilo Wy’am Tribe; Chinook Indian Nation; Clatsop-Nehalem Confederated Tribes; Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation; Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation; Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians; Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde; Confederated Tribes of the Lower Rogue; Confederated Tribes of the Siletz Indians; Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation; Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs; Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians; Cowlitz Indian Tribe; Coquille Indian Tribe; Klamath Tribes; Quinault Indian Nation; and Rogue Valley Shasta Takelma.
We bow with deep respect to their elders and recognize these tribes as the elder nations.[ii] We support their work of reclaiming ancestral homelands, languages and traditions; and their efforts to revitalize and sustain Land and Water for the well-being of its many inhabitants (salmon and eels; ducks and geese; roots, bulbs, berries, nuts, seeds; deer and elk; people; others), and for generations yet to come.
[i] According to linguistic ethnologist Melville Jacobs: “Northwest states, before 1750, had sixty to seventy Indian languages, two to three thousand bands, hamlets, or villages, and something under, around, or over two hundred thousand people.” (from “The First Oregonians,” pg. 101)
[ii] From “The First Oregonians,” pg. 39