The Lower Elwha Klallam: The Strong People of the River
Near Port Angeles, Washington
The Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe takes its name from the river that defines their homeland. The Elwha drains from the glaciated heart of the Olympic Mountains and empties into the Strait of Juan de Fuca just west of Port Angeles. The word Klallam means strong people, a name the tribe uses proudly for themselves.
They have lived at the mouth of the Elwha and along this stretch of the Olympic coastline for thousands of years. At the Point No Point Treaty of eighteen fifty-five, the Klallam ceded most of their territory to the United States while reserving fishing rights that they have fought in court to protect ever since. In nineteen thirty-five and thirty-six, the federal government persuaded the tribe to give up their land inside the city of Port Angeles and relocate to a small reservation west of town, clearing the waterfront for the industrial development that would follow.
The tribe rebuilt their community on the lower Elwha River, near the mouth of the river, below the dams that blocked the salmon runs they had always depended on. The removal of the Elwha Dam and the Glines Canyon Dam, completed by twenty fourteen in what became the largest dam removal project in American history, was the culmination of decades of Lower Elwha Klallam advocacy. The river is recovering.
Salmon are reported to be returning to stretches they had been blocked from for a century. For the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, the river's return is more than ecology. It is the undoing of a century of loss.
