By Corvo Rohwer, Puyallup Tribal News
The Puyallup Tribal Language Program, in collaboration with the Puyallup Tribe Planning Department and the City of Tacoma, unveiled 176 new Lushootseed street signs in late July. The names were taken from the Lushootseed Creation History, dukʷibəł.
Spanning 61 intersections on reservation land, the signs emphasize the Tribe’s commitment to not only revitalizing the language, but sharing it with the people on the Puyallup Reservation through visibility. Language Program staff hosted the July unveiling event in full immersion Lushootseed with English translators.
“ʔəbil’ xʷiʔ gʷəshaydxʷ čəɫ tiiɫ dukʷibəɫ slələʔul’b, gʷəl xʷiʔ gʷəssuxʷtəščəɫ tiiɫ gʷəɫ tuʔiišədčəɫ səxʷəshaydubutčəɫ. If we do not know our creation history we will not recognize a part of our ancestral people, which is how we know ourselves, our identities,” said Language Teacher Heather Williams in Lushootseed, which was translated to English by Language Teacher Irene McCloud.
Language Director Amber Hayward said she was initially inspired eight years ago , where the Bitterroot Salish, Upper Pend d’Oreilles (Ql̓ispé) and Kootenai (Ksanka) Tribes, also known as the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Nation, have a wealth of bilingual signage.
“When I was driving on my mom’s reservation, it was very clear I was on the reservation, very clear,” Hayward said. “You go one direction on the highway, and it was the Salish language. And then going in the opposite direction was the language… . It was very clear that you are on a Tribal reservation.”
With a desire to bring a similar sense of Tribal visibility back to the Puyallup Reservation, Hayward and the Language Department paired up with the Planning and Land Use Department to begin the project. The inception of the street sign project goes back eight years, with much of that time spent working with the City of Tacoma on developing a new policy process for bilingual street names.
“A large part of it was just working with them and seeing what works, and finding how we could get the project to fruition,” Puyallup Tribe Planning and Land Use Director Robert Barandon said.
The city wanted to make additional efforts to develop protocols not just for Tribal uses, but for future bilingual projects, as well. This led to the project having a longer up-front development time to complete, but with a hopefully sturdier foundation for future endeavors regarding bilingual signage.
“We had to be in it for the long game,” Hayward said. “Originally, the City of Tacoma did not have a bilingual street sign policy. At that time, the city had to go through their proper protocol. And they can’t just whip stuff out, so what they did was they looked at other cities.”
Former Planning and Land Use Director Andrew Strobel said the policy framework took a long time to develop due to most roadway signage being managed through the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, and that deviations from it would require both time and money. Using the City of Seattle and City of Lakewood as examples of a starting place for policy drafting, the project began to move closer to fruition over the years before being formally approved by Tacoma’s City Council on Oct. 8, 2024.
“The most critical element to get everyone on board and finally executing the project was when Chris Duenas of the Tribe’s Language Program presented the creation story motif for the signage to city staff,” Strobel said. “After the City of Tacoma approved their new policy and we got the budget approved by both the City and the Tribe, we had our plan in place.”
Hayward said the Language Department had gone through various iterations for the street sign naming, such as translating street numbers into Lushootseed, listing names of salmon and exploring different types of plants before deciding on the dukʷibəł story.
“At that time, I believe we were just getting into learning our own creation history, and there are so many character names, people and animals in the creation history,” Hayward said. “After we brainstormed, we all voted and we all liked the creation history theme for the street sign project.”
The street signs were named with the intention of following the story in two sections, with the northern/southern streets following the pre-dukʷibəł story before he was Changer and the eastern/western streets being the individual works of Changer.
The creation history story and street sign translations can be explored further on the Language Department website. It can also be found at the new park signs recently installed at Tribal Admin, another project of the Language Department to expand visibility.
While the park sign project had been in development for around three to four years and was originally intended to be separate from the street signs, both coincidentally reached completion at the same time in July.
“Strangely, the City of Tacoma signs and the park signs are happening at the exact same time,” Hayward said. “It’s very strange, but very awesome.”
The park signs can be found on the Tribal Admin campus, complete with speech buttons that enunciate sections of the story or provide additional context. With these two projects now having reached completion, both Hayward and Strobel expressed it will be a large boost for Tribal visibility on the reservation, and will be a long-lasting establishment for Lushootseed within the community.
