INDIGENOUS HERITAGE Did you know? You can learn about the early days of Lincoln City and its surroundings at the North Lincoln County Historical Museum. COURTESY OF THE CONFEDERATED TRIBES OF SILETZ INDIANS Feather Dance Lincoln City and the surrounding area is part of the ancestral homeland of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians and the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde. We celebrate this vibrant and resilient Indigenous heritage. When visiting Lincoln City, take some time to learn about these communities that continue to steward the land and shape the culture of this area. The Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians is the most diverse confederation of Native Americans on a single reservation in the United States. It is composed of more than 30 bands and tribes, including the Clatsop, Chinook, Tillamook, Lower Umpqua and Shasta. These tribes speak 10 completely different languages, each with multiple dialects, and have a combined ancestral territory of over 20 million acres (8.1 million ha) in Western Oregon, Northern California and Southwestern Washington. Despite these differences, the varying Siletz tribes shared many cultural values and practices before the arrival of Europeans. They traveled by canoe, passed down their history through oral traditions, revered sacred sites, fished, hunted and gathered plant foods from the rich natural environment around them. They were skilled basket makers, canoe carvers and architects, and they continue to be so today. The Siletz people have faced relentless and brutal oppression over the past 250 years. In 1856 they were forced onto the 1.1-million-acre (445,000 ha) Coast Indian Reservation on the Central Oregon Coast. Nearly 900,000 acres (364,000 ha) of that land was unlawfully seized from them over the following decades. The community was simultaneously devastated by starvation, violence, exposure, depression, disease and boarding-school abuse. In 1954 the U.S. federal government “terminated” the tribe, stripping it of its federally recognized status. This was part of a nationwide series of terminations that aimed to assimilate Native Americans into mainstream society and strip them of their traditional cultures and communities. After termination, the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians lost their sovereign government, as well as their remaining resources and land. 42 EXPLORELINCOLNCITY.COM
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