The House of Awakened Culture () is a community house in

Suquamish The Suquamish () are a Lushootseed-speaking Native American people, located in present-day Washington in the United States. They are a southern Coast Salish people. Today, most Suquamish people are enrolled in the federally recognized Suquami ...

Washington State Washington (), officially the State of Washington, is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. Named for George Washington—the first U.S. president—the state was formed from the western part of the Washington ...

, on the

Port Madison Indian Reservation The Port Madison Native Reservation is an Indigenous Reservation in the U.S. state of Washington belonging to the Suquamish Tribe, a federally recognized indigenous nation and signatory to the Treaty of Point Elliott of 1855. Location The reserv ...

. Built by the

tribe in 2008, it acts as a

spiritual successor A spiritual successor (sometimes called a spiritual sequel) is a product or fictional work that is similar to, or directly inspired by, another previous work, but (unlike a traditional prequel or sequel) does not explicitly continue the product lin ...

to the historic

Old Man House Old Man House was the largest "bighouse" (a type of longhouse) in what is now the U.S. state of Washington, and once stood on the shore of Puget Sound. Lying at the center of the Suquamish winter village on Agate Pass, just south of the present-d ...

, which was burnt by the local

Indian agent In United States history, an Indian agent was an individual authorized to interact with American Indian tribes on behalf of the government. Background The federal regulation of Indian affairs in the United States first included development of t ...

in 1870 in an attempt to disperse the tribe. Since its opening in 2009, the house has served as a

community center Community centres, community centers, or community halls are public locations where members of a community tend to gather for group activities, social support, public information, and other purposes. They may sometimes be open for the whole co ...

for the Suquamish tribe and the community.

History

The Suquamish Tribe historically had a

longhouse A longhouse or long house is a type of long, proportionately narrow, single-room building for communal dwelling. It has been built in various parts of the world including Asia, Europe, and North America. Many were built from timber and often rep ...

on the shore of the

Puget Sound Puget Sound ( ) is a sound of the Pacific Northwest, an inlet of the Pacific Ocean, and part of the Salish Sea. It is located along the northwestern coast of the U.S. state of Washington. It is a complex estuarine system of interconnected ma ...

named Old Man House. While it is not clear when the building was first constructed, the site where it stood had acted as the Suquamish tribe's "mother village" for at least 2,000 years. In 1870, possibly in an attempt to force the tribe's dispersal and accelerate assimilation, the building was burnt to the ground by the local

. The tribe retained ownership of the land until 1904, when it was sold to the U.S. Army. The

Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission The Washington State Park System is a set of state parks owned by the state government of Washington, USA. They are managed by the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission. There are over 140 parks throughout the state, including 19 marine ...

operated the site as a state park from 1950 to 2004, when the land was transferred back to the tribe. Also in 2004, the Suquamish Tribal Council began exploring the possibility of building a community center for the tribe to host traditional events. In 2006, the Suquamish tribe began a

capital campaign Fundraising or fund-raising is the process of seeking and gathering voluntary financial contributions by engaging individuals, businesses, charitable foundations, or governmental agencies. Although fundraising typically refers to efforts to gathe ...

to fund the development of culturally significant projects, including the

Suquamish Museum The Suquamish Museum preserves and displays relics and records related to the Suquamish Tribe, including artifacts from the Old Man House and the Baba'kwob site. It is located on the Port Madison Indian Reservation in Washington state and was foun ...

, a memorial to

Chief Seattle Chief Seattle ( – June 7, 1866) was a Suquamish and Duwamish chief. A leading figure among his people, he pursued a path of accommodation to white settlers, forming a personal relationship with "Doc" Maynard. The city of Seattle, in th ...

, and the House of Awakened Culture. The house was designed by Mithun, a

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

-based architecture firm, and construction began in mid-2008. The house was dedicated and named on February 28, 2009, in a ceremony bringing together over 400 visitors from across the United States and Canada. It opened to the public in a second ceremony on March 10. During the ceremony's opening prayer, a tribal elder declared that "It's been a long, long time since we've had a home to call our own. It's the dreams of our ancestors, our people to have our own place to be who we were meant to be." Shortly after the house's official opening on February 28, 2009, it hosted the end of the 2009 Tribal Canoe Journey. Over a six-day period, nearly 10,000

indigenous people Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...

from around the world traveled to the house for a celebration of native culture. Since then, the house has continued to act as a community hub for the Suquamish tribe. Some community members, including former Tribal Council presidents and Stonechild Chiefstick, are memorialized there.

Architecture

The building is long and concave, consisting of a main hall, accompanying canoe shed, and garden area. A total of , the house is primarily constructed out of red cedar and other woods native to the

Kitsap Peninsula The Kitsap Peninsula () lies west of Seattle across Puget Sound, in Washington state in the Pacific Northwest. Hood Canal separates the peninsula from the Olympic Peninsula on its west side. The peninsula, a.k.a. "Kitsap", encompasses all of Kits ...

. The auditorium of the building features large house posts displaying various Suquamish teachings. The posts, which weigh between , were installed using a pulley system and teams of 30 workers. Comparing the House of Awakened Culture to traditional longhouses, Lauren Rieke described it as fitting into a larger trend of tribes asserting their culture, writing that the longhouse "exemplifies the contemporary culture of the Suquamish, while at the same time providing a tangible link to their past traditions." Rieke noted that unlike more traditional longhouses, the House of Awakened Culture has large double doors and horizontal siding rather than vertical.

References

{{coord, 47.72924, -122.55265, format=dms, type:landmark_region:US-WA, display=title Suquamish Buildings and structures in Kitsap County, Washington 2009 establishments in Washington (state) Community centers in the United States