Category: Jamestown S’Klallam

Sorry I’ve been missing

Jamestown village with 7 Cedars casino in the background with reflections in Sequim bay.

Sorry for the absence…site was having technical difficulties and wasn’t showing my posts! I could see them but you couldn’t. When I wasnt getting any comments from my fine followers I knew something was up.

Kudos the the S’Klallam tribe for putting a massive amount of lights on anything they own around Sequim. It is a beautiful display that brings a lot of joy to all of us who live here.

Here in our backyard

The Jamestown Medical Center, above, is run by our local Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe which has many successful ventures here, including a golf course, casino, restaurants, and construction businesses. A hotel is under construction. This summer the Tribe announced that they purchased land in Sequim’s downtown and plan to build a regional healing center for people addicted to opiods. Like many places in the U.S., drugs are a problem in this region. But siting a treatment center in Sequim has ignited a firestorm of controversy and opposition. It certainly doesn’t look like it will calm down anytime soon.

The Longhouse “House of Learning”

The Peninsula College Longhouse is the first traditional longhouse in the nation on a community college campus. It was built as a collaboration between the Peninsula College and six Tribes in our region, the Hoh, Quileute, Makah, Port Gamble S’Klallam, Jamestown S’Klallam and the Lower Elwah Klallam. The Longhouse is known as the Longhouse “House of Learning” and it functions as an art gallery featuring Native artists as well as hosting tribal ceremonies and and a variety of programs from film screenings and classes to study halls and summer camps.

The interior great room is warm and welcoming, styled with updated features that are reminiscent of a traditional longhouse, including long benches along the walls, a skylight to represent a traditional smoke hole and sunlight cast onto the floor to represent a fire pit.

Native art and carvings line the walls of the great room. There are masks which represent traditional mythological creatures, drums, a painting, and an eagle blanket that was created as a joint project by a student group.

This is a detail of one of two wolf masks carved by Quileute Tribal Member David Jackson and designed by Evinjames Ashue of the Hoh Tribe.

I have additional photos of Longhouse artwork that I plan to post from time to time. There is some beautiful art there.