Rosalee Walz, a Chemakum Elder and chair of the Chemakum Tribal Council, is scheduled to be hosted by the Carnegie Reading Room at the Port Townsend Public Library at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, May 14.

“This is our first time, so we're honored to serve as stewards for stories and storykeepers, for the Chemakum tribe, and with the Chautauqua for Rhody Festival week,” Library Director Melody Sky Weaver said. “Libraries flourish when we partner with the community, so this program is an excellent example of how it takes a village to come together.”

Walz feels what she described as a “passion” to reclaim, restore and promote her people’s history and culture, to “give the gift” of preserving their link to the land, for cultural and sustenance purposes.

“The passion is to make a history, make it known, have it told and bring it alive, in good spirit, with good intentions,” Walz said. “It's a difficult history, but it’s of this place, and deserves its place. Sharing that history really enriches it, and what better place to share it than the library.”

Walz noted that “there's a lot of our history that's still not known,” since “the victors write history,” and yet, when the Chemakum and the Quileute were one tribe, “we lived in the whole north end of the Olympic Peninsula and there’s no oral tradition, no story and no documentation that we came from elsewhere. In our view, we’ve always been here, and we’re still here.”

Jo Blair has been a member of the Native Connections Action Group of the Quimper Unitarian Universalist Fellowship since 2014, and has led it alongside Maria Mendes.

“The first goal of our group is to educate our community about the Native history of this place,” said Blair, an enrolled member of the Chinook Indian Nation. “For the past three years, we partnered with the New World Time Chautauqua to bring indigenous voices to the workshops, during the Rhody Festival’s Chautauqua week.”

On Sunday, May 19, the Chautauqua events will be centered next to the Salish Sea, which Blair noted is “very important to native cultures,” at the Hope Marine Park, the American Legion hall and the Cotton building.

To learn more about the Chemakum tribe, visit their website at chemakum.org/our-history.

The Port Townsend Chautauqua during Rhody Week, organized by the QUUF Native Connections Action Group, and generously sponsored by the Friends of the Port Townsend Library.