Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Tulalip Tribes’ journey put proudly on display

$19 million cultural center was 30 years in making

Museum director Hank Gobin moves his motorized chair to the front doors of the Hibulb Cultural Center with a 1913 Edward Curtis photograph, “Evening on Puget Sound,” hanging in the background in Tulalip, Wash. The welcome figure at left was carved by Tulalip artist James Madison. (Alan Berner)
Lynda V. Mapes Seattle Times

TULALIP, Wash. – The Tulalip Tribes on Saturday will open the doors to their newest pride and joy: the $19 million Hibulb Cultural Center.

Named for a traditional stronghold of the tribe near the mouth of the Snohomish River, the cultural center is still a stronghold today, after 30 years in the making. It’s a place where the story of the journey of the Tulalip Tribes is told in their own words, so their people may preserve it, their young rediscover it and the general public come to better know their neighbors.

With about 4,000 members, including 2,500 living on the reservation, the Tulalip Tribes’ elders and leaders guided the vision for the cultural center over many years of discussion about what tribal members wanted it to be and do.

The result is a facility that includes a 23,000-square-foot cultural center, a 10,000-square- foot collections wing and a 42-acre natural-history preserve.

Beginning with no budget, no office, no staff or even a desk, Hank Gobin, director of the cultural center and natural- history preserve, in time learned what tribal members wanted the museum to be and do: provide cultural educational activities, so the young people could learn and see aspects of their culture they might not have been raised with, and tell the public the story of the Tulalip Tribes’ journey.

“Who are we? Where did we come from? How did we get here? Where are we now? Where are we going? It’s important not only for our people, but for the general public to understand these things,” Gobin said.

Not taken from any book of museology or exhibit design, the exhibits were developed by the community, especially a core group of elders, whose shared experiences became the main themes, Gobin said. He discerned themes that are historical and deeply personal.

“What they were bringing was things they had observed, and things they learned from their parents and from their grandparents. These elders and tribal leaders participated in defining the history of the Tulalip Tribes; they lived and experienced it. The goodness, the pain, the anguish – it didn’t come from a book.”

The exhibit’s main themes include the boarding-school era, from about the mid-1800s to about the 1930s, when tribal children were separated from their parents and stripped of their culture, history, life ways and spirituality. Told in historical photographs, and quotations from tribal members describing their experience, the exhibit, said former tribal leader Stan Jones, makes the point that “their concept of education was to destroy our language and culture.”

The Tulalip Tribes are descendants of the Snohomish, Snoqualmie, Skykomish and other tribes and bands that signed the Treaty of Point Elliott.

Asked how he feels about completing the cultural center, Gobin, 70, who was born and raised on this reservation, said this work is about the journey of his people. “I’ve been the eyes and the ears, but it’s their story.”