Recent News

By Ernest A. Jasmin, Puyallup Tribal News Editor Edie Holland fondly recalls making her first drum in third grade. “I think it’s cool that, in our culture, the first thing you make you’re supposed to give to somebody that you love,” says Holland, an enrolled Puyallup Tribal member. “So, I gifted my first drum to my sister. She gifted her first drum to me.” “So it was a win-win situation,” she adds, grinning broadly. “I still got a drum.” Tapping back into that childhood joy has helped her rebound from troubled times lately. Holland and some of her newest friends…

PUYALLUP RESERVATION, Tacoma, Wash.—The Puyallup Tribe has broken ground on a brand new Tribal Administration building. About 100 people turned out on a cold Friday morning for a ceremony held for Tribal community members and employees on March 24. Heritage Manager Connie McCloud gave a blessing, and the Culture Department sang before Tribal Councilmembers shared their thoughts about the site’s history, the new building’s importance and symbolism of how much the Tribe has grown in the decades since administrative functions took place out of trailer space. Chairman Bill Sterud and other councilmembers noted that the old Cascadia center, once Cushman…

By Ernest A. Jasmin, Puyallup Tribal News Editor In February, Electron Hydro LLC and Chief Operating Officer Thom Fischer pleaded guilty to a single criminal count in connection with polluting the Puyallup River in 2020. The plea concluded a case brought by Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson that relied on evidence gathered by the Puyallup Tribe in its efforts to document the impact of illegally dumped artificial turf at the site of Electron Hydro’s 120-year-old dam near Mount Rainier National Park. The company placed old turf into a temporary flow bypass channel during the summer of 2020, topping it with…

By Katie Manzanares Oregon Trail videogame 2022 receives Indigenous audit Recently, a new version of the Oregon Trail video game has been released not so coincidently during Native American Heritage Month. The game essentially promoted the westward movement, which wasn’t good for Native people who were forced to be relocated and lost traditional lands. Many Americans traveled the route that was sure to provide work and a better way of life. I had to see if the game had changed from the first time I played it as a third grader on a computer version that was a pixelated green-screen…

By Puyallup Tribal News Staff The Puyallup School District sits on the traditional homelands of the Puyallup people. The Puyallup School Board voted 4-0 on Oct. 17 to amend its relations with the Puyallup Tribe and ensure accurate implementation of Since Time Immemorial (STI) curriculum. The adoption came at the end of a school board meeting in which several community members urged the board to ensure Since Time Immemorial curriculum was in place. In 2015, the Legislature passed Senate Bill 5433 modifying the original 2005 legislation, now requiring the Since Time Immemorial: Tribal Sovereignty in Washington State or other Tribally-developed…