Kwiaht

Mission:

Science for stewardship: working with Tribes and local communities to protect and restore ecosystems, and conducting scientific research that strengthens good stewardship of cultural and biological resources in the San Juan Archipelago, incorporating local knowledge and a Coast Salish perspective. 

Description:

Kwiaht was organized in 2006 by Samish Tribal leader Ken Hansen in an effort to build bridges between Tribal and non-Tribal interests in the San Juan Islands. Kwiaht’s mission is “science for stewardship”, or in Ken’s words, “cutting edge science with a Coast Salish heart”. Kwiaht functions as a cooperative, with a current core group of 12 professionals collaborating on issues ranging from the impacts of climate change on marine food webs, to monitoring rare reptiles and amphibians, and monitoring disease outbreaks in birds, bats and native rodents. In the food-security field, Kwiaht maintains a research garden with native food plants; an orchard for preserving and sharing heritage fruit varieties; and a lending library of pails, shovels, traps and other gear for needy islanders to harvest seafood. Kwiaht’s Lopez Island laboratory has carried out “fates and effects” studies of toxic consumer products in clams, fish, bats and sediments since 2009 and trained dozens of young islanders as biochemists. Kwiaht provides “boots on the beach” stewardship and interpretation for Indian Island in Eastsound where storm water systems meet the nearshore; manages culturally important plant resources in 15-acre Hummel Lake bog on Lopez, and grows Indigenous food crops as part of a 25-acre freshwater wetland conservation program with private landowners at Three Meadows, San Juan Island. We built 1,200 feet of“living breakwaters” (rapidly growing oyster reefs) in Fisherman Bay, Lopez, as one of the EPA’s eight national 2022 Coastal Watersheds projects, improving water quality as well as supporting future Tribal and non-Tribal harvests. From 2023-2025 Kwiaht has worked on assessing and addressing toxic threats to the Nisqually Tribe's treaty herring fishery in the south Sound. The present proposal is also concerned with healthy traditional food and medicines, but its focus on plants as treaty resources is unique. "Kwiaht" means "clean/powerful" in the Lushootseed language!