The Ozette Prairies of Olympic National Park - Natural Resources ...

THE TRADITIONAL CULTURE OF QUILEUTE PRAIRIE USE
Traditional Ownership of the Prairies of Quileute Country: Use Rights and Stewardship Obligations
In this section, we will consider native prairie use in terms of the traditional Quileute concept of
tribal territory and individual land ownership, which are the basis for their sense of land-use rights and
stewardship obligation. First, let’s detail the basis for the Quileute’s sense that their traditional territory
belonged to them, a premise about which they had no doubts. This assumption derives from their worldview
as depicted in their oral tradition. According to the Quileute cosmogony, the world always existed.
Then, during the Time of Beginnings a shape-changing transformer called Q’wati went about the region
changing living things and features of the natural world into what we see in the world today. At the Time
of Beginnings, animals and people were simply beings who had or were given by Qwati the features of
the animals that they became. There are narratives, still told among the tribe, that account for many of
the focal features of Quileute country. For example, Q’wati created the rivers of Quileute country while
escaping from a pack of wolves. Then, later, at the mouth of the Quileute River, Q’wati transformed those
same wolves into the ancestors of the Quileute; and, finding the p’ip’isodat’siLi (“upside-down people”)
living at the mouth of the Hoh River, he created the ancestors of the Hoh people as we know them by
showing them how to walk on their feet instead of their hands. Thus, the oral literature that is Quileute
tribal history confirms that they were created to inhabit, use, collectively own, and pass on to their descendants
the area that includes the drainages of the various rivers that combine to make the Quillayute
River. As Jack Ward said in a potlatch speech in 1928 (QT, p.12).
…yix tas t’siq’ati yix hicha’wataxw hilokiL xi’ chiLqwat’oqw hixat
xwa’ tchi:qa’axw xwa’ tchiLqwat’oqw.
…the land, as it belongs to our children as well as to our children’s children.
There is some tension between many published assumptions about native land “ownership” and the traditional
Quileute concept. In order to make the Quileute customary perspective on land ownership clear,
we will discuss it in terms of:
(a) the Treaty of Olympia’s term “open and unclaimed” land;
(b) Quileute Use-ownership -vs- American legal real property ownership;
(c) Quileute Use-ownership based on building or a continuing improvement on the land;
(d) Quileute concepts of Alienable and Inalienable property;
(e) Permissive utilization of a property’s resources -vs- users in common
Were the Quileute Prairies “Open and Unclaimed land?” The terms “open” and “unclaimed” were
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