On Seattle’s reinvigorated waterfront, fresh rain pulls out the scent of Douglas fir from a new art installation: a series of posts and beams inspired by traditional Indigenous longhouse architecture.
The artwork, which stretches from Columbia to Spring streets and towers over plant beds and a new bike path, is a part of Seattle’s larger waterfront revitalization project. It’s one of nine new and planned installations inspired by the history, ecology and communities of the land on which they stand. Three pieces of art were made by Native artists.
As Seattle’s waterfront project carves a new chapter in the city’s history, Indigenous artists are forging spaces for Indigenous people with their art. While the Alaskan Way Viaduct once bordered the city’s waterfront, crowding it with stacked rows of traffic, the artists’ sculptures reinforce a new vision of the space that invites personal interaction — and prods people to recognize Native culture, land and peoples in Seattle’s past and future.
With the posts and beams already installed and more artwork on the way this year, here’s a glimpse at how the project came to life.
Evolving culture
Oscar Tuazon is the lead artist behind the posts and beams on the waterfront; he grew up in Indianola on the Suquamish Tribe’s Port Madison Indian Reservation but is not Native himself. He now lives in Los Angeles and his work has been featured in installations and museums worldwide. But for Tuazon, the Pacific Northwest is special — he still has a small studio near the Hoh River on the Olympic Peninsula, in fact.
The waterfront project was a natural fit.
As a teenager, Tuazon felt inspired by the collaboration in Washington’s Indigenous communities as they revitalized canoeing traditions during the 1989 Paddle to Seattle. A multiday canoe journey from La Push to Seattle’s Golden Gardens Park, the journey kicked off an annual tradition focused on cultural revitalization and celebration. Tuazon admired how Coast Salish people “taught themselves how to make canoes because the chain of knowledge had been shattered by the prohibition on those practices.”
Witnessing that collaboration was a slice of inspiration for Tuazon’s new work on the waterfront.
Tuazon consulted with the Muckleshoot and Suquamish tribal councils, who nominated Randi Purser (Suquamish) and Tyson Simmons and Keith Stevenson (Muckleshoot) to help. This month, a Muckleshoot house post made by Simmons and Stevenson and a Suquamish house post made by Purser will be placed on each end of the three-block installation.
One of the two house posts will complete a family in sculpture across Puget Sound. Purser’s post depicts Sholeetsa, Chief Seattle’s mother, holding Chief Seattle as an infant. Across the water, on Bainbridge Island, another of Purser’s posts shows Schweabe, Chief Seattle’s father.
“It represents a young family who faced a time of change,” Purser said. “I wanted to convey that feeling within Seattle of an Indian woman facing the future.”
Purser said these carvings represent a broader theme: confidently confronting challenges and change with grace.
While the posts are carved from cedar, the traditional material for Coast Salish house posts, the rest of the installation was created using Douglas fir. Tuazon chose to work with wood due to its historical presence in both Indigenous and industrial Seattle architecture — and with the goal of stoking collaborations with other artists in the future.
“What I was really interested in was this idea of wood architecture as a perpetual, infinite kind of process that, rather than building with a permanent material like concrete, that wood architecture actually has to be renewed and rebuilt by each generation,” Tuazon said.
Sculpture, like culture, should be dynamic, Tuazon said: “It’s about creating a space for people. Opening a space and creating a sense of place.”
Longhouses, Tuazon explained, were modular structures that were reconfigured seasonally. The post and beam structures that inspired Tuazon’s installation were permanent fixtures, but other components, like cedar boards, would be bundled up to build smaller houses during the summer months.
“There was this real misapprehension of these structures by the first European settlers who thought that these post and beam frames were abandoned buildings,” Tuazon said. “But they weren’t abandoned. They were just kind of buildings in motion.”
Tuazon said his intention in creating an evolving sculpture mirrors the resurgence of Salish cultures.
“It’s just this amazing renaissance of Salish culture happening right now,” he said. “I hope the structure is able to support other artists, other carvers, and also act as this incomplete structure that we can each imagine in our mind, or that’s completed in our mind.”
These new works reflect the dynamism of Coast Salish culture, which honors the past as it evolves. Qwalsius-Shaun Peterson (Puyallup), whose art will be installed across from Pier 58 this year, echoed that sentiment. In his artist statement, Peterson says he hopes his work “will demonstrate that Native art is not static. Our people are part of this land and its history, but most importantly we are part of the present.” (Peterson did not comment for this story.)
Both pieces are part of the city’s broader waterfront face-lift, an $806 million project that will create a promenade park on the shoreline in addition to the Overlook Walk, playgrounds and a new bike path.
Angela Brady, director of Seattle’s Office of the Waterfront and Civic Projects, said these artists were tasked with representing various elements of the waterfront as the area gets a new look.
“We really wanted (the art) to be of this place. And so the artwork may address environmental issues related to the waterfront. Or they can be about the communities of the waterfront. That is really where the Indigenous artwork projects come in,” Brady said. “It’s about helping people understand this place and reinforcing it through the artwork.”
Weaving connection
Farther north on the waterfront, near the Salish Steps on the Overlook Walk, a large basket designed and woven by the MTK Matriarchs will be installed this spring. It will also invite viewers to consider the relationship between Seattle’s Indigenous past, present and future.
MTK stands for Malynn Foster, Tamela LaClair and Kimberly Deriana. The trio have a palpable sense of respect and admiration for each other and for the role of women in Indigenous communities.
“That’s where a lot of our women are, with our work in our communities — in basket weaving,” Foster said. “These are the oldest stories of our women, these old designs that are passed down and the teachings that are passed down.”
Foster and LaClair are cousins who have Coast Salish heritage, while Deriana, who descends from the Mandan and Hidatsa tribes, grew up in Montana and now resides on Coast Salish land; she has a background in Indigenous architecture, planning, design and art.
“Tammy lives smack dab on the rez, I live between two reservations, Kim was raised without reservation,” Foster said. “We bring different perspectives, but the same teachings of our ancestors in this harmonious way.”
She and LaClair taught Deriana how to weave. Foster was excited to pass on knowledge that elders had shared with her, explaining the significance behind the weaving techniques as the artists worked on this project.
“I wanted to give homage to the way we do things and why we do those things,” Foster said. She added that “weaving the wisdom of all (of our) teachings together” as part of this project was meaningful, “being patient and connected instead of coming from places of self.”
Foster said sharing knowledge is a core part of the weaving tradition — and that art is an integral part of cultural learning for the Coast Salish. As a child, she said, “I could interact with these pieces because that’s how we learn and that’s how we become the weaver. Everything we do is that way.”
Given that the artists shared knowledge to create the sculpture, it’s appropriate that community and connection are central to how the Matriarchs want their work to be received, too.
“It’s a gathering basket. We created a space for people to gather,” Foster said. It’s a place “where people can come and have their ceremony, where they can come and have their special moments. I wanted my ancestors, as they’re walking through that space, to stop and see something familiar from their time.”
Deriana’s architectural expertise helped meet the challenges of this artwork (namely, navigating weight constraints and aiming for a design that wouldn’t block the view of Puget Sound at the Salish Steps). She added that people will be able to literally walk through and around the basket; “it’s not this untouchable art thing that isn’t for people.”
For generations, Coast Salish communities have faced violence and attempts at cultural erasure. These new artworks make a clear statement: Indigenous people belong here.
“We need to see ourselves in the city and on this waterfront on the shoreline so that our past ancestors and our future ancestors know that this is their place and this place is for us,” Deriana said. “That’s been a big theme in the work — making Native people especially feel a sense of belonging and that we’re united because we’ve been so separated through colonization.”