![]() ![]() Huckleberries are a very worthy garden plant and were also used by Native Americans. The evergreen huckleberry was another plant commonly used by Native American peoples. The pale blue to dark blue flowers are quite pretty and appear in late spring to early summer. Adding a rich potting supplement, such as Black Gold Natural & Organic Potting Soil, is recommended. The Camassia Natural Area near the City of West Linn, Oregon is a 22-acre natural area owned and maintained by the Nature Conservancy which is an ideal location to see Camas blooming in the spring.Ĭamas is a very worthwhile garden flower, and bulbs can be purchased at many garden centers. At one time there were many meadows of Camas, these areas have largely disappeared because of agriculture and development. They are said to taste like sweet potato. The bulbs can harvested after the flowers have withered and then boiled or pit-roasted. This bulbous plant is even credited as being an important food source for Lewis and Clark during their expedition. CamasĪ plant grown and cultivated for food was Camassia quamash, often referred to as Camas. A couple to look for are the yellow foliaged ‘Sunshine’ (30′) and ‘Whipcord’ (5-6′), which has dark green, thread-like foliage that turns bronze in winter. Native to the Pacific Northwest, south to Northern California, north to Alaska and eastward to Montana, the Western Red Cedar is much too large for most gardens since it can sometimes reach 200 feet, however, compact cultivars have been developed. ![]() The evergreen boughs of western red cedar are lovely, but native trees can reach 200′ in height making them poor choices for most landscapes. The leaves were a major source of winter food for big game and deer will browse it year round. The bark was use to make skirts and capes, and the roots and limbs were used for baskets and rope. The tree was easy to split and frequently used to make canoes as well as posts that were used to create a foundation for planks that could be extended into rivers for catching fish. One of the most prevalent and useful trees throughout our region was the Thuja plicata (Western Red Cedar). While ‘gardening’ as we know it today was minimal here in the Pacific Northwest, that does not mean plants were not important and many were used for eating and other everyday uses. It is interesting to look back in history and try to imagine not only what plants were used by Native Americans, but how they were used. There is a folk tale that has been passed down through many generations saying that at certain times of the year, the streams had so much salmon in them that one could walk across and never get their feet wet! With the ocean, rivers, streams and forests, there was an abundance of food and they generally did not ‘garden’. History seems to indicate that Native Americans living on the west side of the Cascades in Oregon and Washington did not rely heavily on a system of agriculture. We acknowledge that these injustices are true here and also for indigenous communities around the globe, like the First Peoples of Mauna Kea, Papua and New Zealand, just to name a few.Not only are the bulbs of Camassia quamash edible, the plants are beautiful and highly garden worthy. We gather here knowing that our presence is part of an ongoing invasion and that these lands were and continue to be forcibly and unlawfully taken from their original indigenous inhabitants. We recognize that the privilege of our campus being on the land on which we now stand comes at great cost to the Coast Salish peoples. with 29 federally recognized tribes represented, as well as several unrecognized tribes. The state of Washington has the 7th largest Native American population in the U.S. In 1854, the Medicine Creek Treaty forcibly removed them from their lands and onto the Puyallup reservation. The Puyallup tribe, a member of the Coast Salish tribal peoples have called this area home since time immemorial. We are so fortunate that TCC is located on the ancestral territory of First Nations peoples. Land acknowledgment (approved by the Office of EDI) Tacoma Community College Land Acknowledgment ![]()
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