First Nations · Third Harvest’s position
Opportunity and participation, not reappropriation. Third Harvest hopes to invite the tribal nations of this region into the working-land economy of the Olympic Peninsula as owners, operators and decision makers, on terms each nation sets for itself.
Third Harvest has no agreements with these nations. Nothing here speaks for any tribe.
Our position
“Land back” is a phrase with deep meaning for many Native people, and it means different things to different nations. We don’t use it to speak for anyone. For Third Harvest it names a direction we believe in: a path where tribes take part in, and benefit from, the value of land on the Olympic Peninsula, and where that participation could, over time, help a nation acquire land it chooses to hold.
We are not proposing to take land from anyone, and we are not asking anyone to give land up. The opportunity we see is in the market itself: a way of valuing land for everything living on it, open to tribes on fair terms. That is the idea behind the Monopoly theory, and this page is where we try to say plainly what it could mean for tribal nations.
None of this is agreed. It is Third Harvest’s position and our hope, offered as an invitation to talk.
Nations we hope to invite
These are sovereign nations with homelands and communities on and beside the Olympic Peninsula. Third Harvest hopes to invite each of them into conversation and, if they choose, into partnership. That choice belongs to each nation. The short description of each comes from the nation’s own website, linked below it.
Third Harvest has no agreements with these nations. Nothing here speaks for any tribe.
Lower Elwha River Valley, west of Port Angeles
The Tribe describes itself as a sovereign, federally recognized Indian Nation that resides in the Lower Elwha River Valley and adjacent bluffs on the north coast of the Olympic Peninsula, just west of Port Angeles.
Source: elwha.org
Third Harvest’s hope
As neighbors in Port Angeles, we hope to ask whether the Tribe sees any place for itself in this work, and to listen before we propose anything.
Blyn, near Sequim
The Tribe’s own history says that in 1874, S’Klallam families pooled $500 in gold coins and bought 210 acres along the Strait of Juan de Fuca, now called Jamestown, the start of the Jamestown S’Klallam community.
Source: jamestowntribe.org
Third Harvest’s hope
We hope to learn from a nation whose own history includes acquiring land on its own terms, and to ask whether shared field records could serve goals it already has.
Northern tip of the Kitsap Peninsula
The Tribe says its reservation was established in the late 1930s on the northern tip of the Kitsap Peninsula, and that many of its members, who total about 1,400, still live there today.
Source: pgst.nsn.us
Third Harvest’s hope
We hope to invite the Tribe into the same conversation as the other two S’Klallam nations, if it sees value in it.
Southwestern corner of the Olympic Peninsula
The Nation says the Quinault Indian Reservation encloses over 208,150 acres on the southwestern corner of the Olympic Peninsula, with 23 miles of Pacific coastline and some of the most productive conifer forest lands in the United States. Its Division of Natural Resources is consolidating the Nation’s holdings by purchasing trust and fee lands.
Source: quinaultindiannation.com
Third Harvest’s hope
We hope to learn from a nation that already manages one of the largest forest land bases on the Peninsula, and to ask whether open records could be useful to it.
History
The S’Klallam (Klallam) people lived in villages along the Strait of Juan de Fuca and traveled seasonally to Hood Canal, the San Juan Islands and Whidbey Island.1 In January 1855, Washington Territory Governor Isaac Stevens met S’Klallam, Skokomish and Chimakum leaders at Point No Point on the Kitsap Peninsula. The council opened on January 25, and the treaty text is dated January 26.2,3 The S’Klallam villages named in the treaty include Elh-wa, and the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe states that the treaty constitutes its federal recognition. Congress ratified it on March 8, 1859.4
The tribes ceded their lands and reserved the right of taking fish at “usual and accustomed grounds and stations.” Article 2 set aside one tract of six sections, or 3,840 acres, at the head of Hood Canal, and Article 3 called on the tribes to move there within a year of ratification.5 The Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe writes that the S’Klallam were assigned to the Skokomish Reservation, more than 100 miles from their ancestral home, and that “many S’Klallams refused to leave.”1 Proposed reserves at Clallam Bay (1859) and on Ediz Hook (1872) were not created.4
Without a reservation of their own, S’Klallam families stayed near their home villages, and three tribes took shape around land they acquired:
The 1974 Boldt decision in United States v. Washington upheld the treaty fishing rights the tribes had reserved, and in 1977 the Indian Claims Commission paid each of the three Klallam bands $100,000 for lands ceded at Point No Point.4,1 Klallam people also live across the Strait: the Lower Elwha timeline records that in 1862 many Klallams from Port Angeles moved to Beecher Bay on Vancouver Island.4
References
Neighbors on the Quimper Peninsula
Some histories, including a National Park Service study and a HistoryLink county history, describe the Chimakum as extinct.3,7 The record also shows a people who survived in smaller numbers. Historian David Buerge, quoted by the Chemakum Tribe, writes that after the raid on their last village the attackers took the captured women and children away as slaves, and that the only survivors in the village were those, including the Chimakum chief, who had gone upstream that morning to spear fish. Survivors later joined the Twana at the head of Hood Canal.1 That account does not name the chief. In 1855 a Chimakum chief, Kul-kah-han, also called General Pierce, signed the Treaty of Point No Point.2
The Chimakum spoke a language related to Quileute and, at the time of contact, lived around Port Townsend and the Quimper Peninsula.3 A Suquamish account recorded by Edward Curtis places their principal village, protected by a heavy stockade, at the mouth of Chimakum Creek.4 They had suffered earlier attacks and disease: a HistoryLink essay, drawing on traditions recorded by George Gibbs, says a coalition of Salish-speaking villages razed the village in the 1820s.5,3
Accounts of the last attack differ. Buerge writes that Chief Seattle helped lead the Suquamish against the Chimakum stronghold of Tsetsibus near Port Townsend, and dates it to 1847 with S’Klallam warriors joining the Suquamish.6,1 Curtis dates it about 1850 and says two Clallam chiefs brought reinforcements.4 A National Park Service study gives 1856 or 1857, and a HistoryLink county history gives 1857 and names other attackers.3,7
By the mid-1800s, the Park Service reports, the last known Chimakum village site was occupied by Klallam-speaking people, who were asserting claim to former Chimakum land.3 In 1859 James Swan described a remnant of about one hundred Chimakum at Port Townsend whom the Indian Department counted as Clallams.1 In 1890 Franz Boas found only three people who still spoke the language, one near Port Townsend and two at Port Gamble.8 In 2022 people who identify as Chimakum formed a council to seek recognition and reclaim their history. In their words, “We are still here.”1 Third Harvest supports recognition for the Chimakum and for tribal recognition generally.
References
Shared value
Below the timber is a second forest economy. Salal, sword fern and evergreen huckleberry are already harvested under permit on the Peninsula, and DNR says products like these are shipped all over the world for use in floral arrangements (DNR). Third Harvest sees the understory as shared value: income from working land that doesn’t require cutting a tree, and that rewards keeping a forest healthy.
Each plant below is already harvested under permit on the Peninsula or documented in its forests, per the sources linked. The last line on each card is only an idea we’d like to explore together.
Gaultheria shallon
Harvested under permit on state trust land through DNR’s Olympic Region office in Forks (DNR, 2026 brush permits), and on Olympic National Forest, where commercial salal permits are sold in Forks, Quinault and Quilcene (USDA Forest Service).
Idea: Floral greens, the understory product with the longest track record here.
Polystichum munitum
Listed on DNR’s 2026 Olympic Region brush permit (DNR).
Idea: Floral greens, harvested so the fronds and the plant both keep coming back.
Vaccinium ovatum
The foliage is listed on DNR’s 2026 Olympic Region brush permit (DNR). Selling huckleberries in any amount takes a Specialized Forest Products Permit (DNR).
Idea: Foliage for floral work, and berries as a food product where harvest for sale is allowed.
Listed on DNR’s 2026 Olympic Region brush permit (DNR).
Idea: Only what tribal knowledge holders consider appropriate. We make no claim about its uses.
Thuja plicata
Western redcedar is one of the conifers the Quinault Indian Nation lists in its forests (QIN). A Forest Service literature review describes cedar leaf oil steam-distilled from fresh foliage, and notes that the steam volatiles from redcedar foliage are highly toxic to coho salmon fry (USDA Forest Service, PNW-GTR-150).
Idea: An oil from foliage left after a harvest, with distillation kept well away from streams.
Pseudotsuga menziesii
Douglas-fir is another conifer the Quinault Indian Nation lists in its forests (QIN).
Idea: The new spring growth, as a possible food and flavor product, subject to food-safety review.
Harvest Sentinel and Harvest Oracle
The universal data bridge. Field sensors, machines and closed record systems rarely speak to each other. Sentinel connects them to open platforms, so a record made in the woods can be read by everyone with a stake in the land.
More on Sentinel →Real-time ecological and land assessment: what is growing, how it is changing, and what the land is worth for everything living on it, not only the timber.
More on Oracle →Together, we believe they could make tribal participation in the forestry economy practical rather than theoretical. This is how we would want them to work with any nation that chose to take part:
A tribal crew and a Third Harvest crew would read the same plot records: what is growing, what was harvested, and how the stand is recovering. One record, not two competing ones.
Every harvest, permit and payment recorded where each party can read it, so value is visible to the people whose land and labor created it.
A design principle, not a feature we have built: data from a nation’s lands would belong to that nation. It would decide who sees it, what is shared, and when it is withdrawn.
A small tribal crew or business could document understory harvest and stewardship work in a form buyers, agencies and lenders can trust, without having to build its own systems first.
Third Harvest has not built any of this with a tribe. These are principles we would hold ourselves to. As a reference for the last one, we look to the CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance published by the Global Indigenous Data Alliance (gida-global.org).
An invitation
This page is not an announcement. It is an open invitation to dialogue, at each nation’s pace and on its terms. If a tribal leader, staff member or knowledge holder would like to talk, we would be honored to listen, and to change anything here that misses the mark.
We will not speak for any nation, and we will not go further with a nation’s name, place or knowledge without asking first.
Third Harvest Inc.
Port Angeles, Washington
Reach us through our Contact page or on Facebook. This page itself collects no information.
Third Harvest has no agreements with these nations. Nothing here speaks for any tribe.
Sources
