State of the Coast Territorial Acknowledgement

The State of the Coast conference is organized and convened by Oregon Sea Grant and typically held in one of Oregon’s beautiful coastal communities, providing participants the opportunity to learn, share, and keep abreast of what’s going on in Oregon’s marine environment. Oregon Sea Grant is headquartered at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon. Oregon State University is located within the traditional homelands of the Mary’s River or Ampinefu Band of Kalapuya. Following the Willamette Valley Treaty of 1855, Kalapuya people were forcibly removed to reservations in Western Oregon in 1856. Today, living descendants of the Kalapuya people are a part of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Community of Oregon (grandronde.org) and the Confederated Tribes of the Siletz Indians (ctsi.nsn.us).

While Oregon Sea Grant serves all of Oregon and acknowledges that all land is indigenous land, we are particularly conscious of the history of the indigenous coastal peoples, their long-term contributions to the environment of this land,  and the successful efforts to have tribes’ federal recognition restored. Sea Grant recognizes the histories of forced removal of the members of the Siletz and Grand Ronde reservations, and those parallel histories of the members of the Coquille and the Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw tribes. Native people have been and continue to live in Oregon since time immemorial, and the land which Oregon now occupies has been home to more than 100 Native American Tribes for more than 10,000 years. Oregon Sea Grant recognizes the contributions of Oregon’s native people to the environment and history of this place and to the future of thriving coastal ecosystems and communities.

Among many resources available, the following allow us to discover more about Native American culture and history in Oregon: