When non-Indians arrived, they attempted to bring the Indian people into white society. Native identity was left on the doorsteps of Indian boarding schools where students were given English names, unfamiliar clothing and silenced from speaking their Native languages. When off-reservation boarding schools opened in the 1880s, founder of Carlisle Indian Industrial School, Richard Pratt, announced with no apologies, “Kill the Indian ... Save the man.”

Assimilation practices didn’t stop there. More than one hundred tribes ceased to exist in the eyes of government when the Termination Era swept the country in the 1950s. America promised to free the Indians from their dependency on the U.S.; the tribes struggled for sovereignty— equal standing with the federal government. No Washington tribes were terminated, but seven, like the Duwamish, remain unrecognized by the U.S. Native Americans like James Rasmussen believe a new longhouse in recent years will help establish their tribal identity. “This gives us a platform to say, ‘We are still here.’”