Breaking Ground: The Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe and the Unearthing of Tse-whit-zen Village (review)

Tourists to Washington State's Olympic Peninsula are often surprised by blight along the waterfront of the City of Port Angeles, where the last of the timber mills remains in operation and the land carries strong memories of industrial development. It is hardly the pristine place people imagine when they think about the region's saltwater beaches and rugged mountain terrain. It is not surprising therefore, given the decline of the timber industry, that Port Angeles was ready in 2003 for new economic development that would better support ecotourism. When Port Angeles was selected as the site for a new marine dry dock, a project that promised greener development, steady employment, and family wage jobs, local civic leaders seized the opportunity and townspeople celebrated the news. In August 2003 construction workers broke ground on the dry dock project. Within a week workers inadvertently dug into human graves and, in doing so, sparked one of the most controversial local debates in recent memory. This is saying a lot for the region that weathered the Makah whaling controversy of the late 1990s. As Lynda Mapes expounds in her new book, Breaking Ground: The Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe and the Unearthing of Tse-whit-zen Village (2009), the dry dock site, located at the base of Ediz Hook (the world's second largest sand spit) included a 2,700-year-old indigenous village that was occupied by ancestors of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe well into the post-contact period. In time 330 intact graves were disinterred along with 13,000 artifacts, making Tse-whit-zen one of the richest archaeological finds in the Pacific Northwest.

Lynda Mapes, a journalist for a Seattle newspaper, learned about Tse-whit-zen when she was asked to cover the story in 2004. Mapes wrote several stories, developed an outstanding website about the site, and eventually spent more than a year interviewing tribal leaders and citizens, archaeologists, city and state officials, and residents of the Olympic Peninsula, many of whom were involved in sorting out problems and collaborating on solutions. Her book thus provides a substantial and detailed record of the Tse-whit-zen dig and the community conflict and controversy involving the State of Washington's Department of Transportation, the City of Port Angeles. and the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe. It is filled with details that are made more real by the fact Mapes was a witness to many of the events she discusses and spoke firsthand with a number of key players. For these reasons Breaking Ground is an important record of the perils that confront individuals and communities in their efforts to collaborate across significant cultural divides.

Port Angeles is a small city in the throes of reinventing itself. Nestled on the northern shores of the Olympic Peninsula and gateway to the Olympic National Park, the city was founded in the late nineteenth century. The region was a place known for big fish, big trees, and big dreams and drew ambitious settlers to its shores. Men like the Canadian emigrant Thomas Aldwell, a real estate developer, and "Big" Mike Earles transformed local land and natural resources into timber mills, powering them with energy harnessed by hydroelectric dams constructed on the nearby Elwha River (Mapes 2009, 61-96). As Mapes echoes in the early section of her book, stories that celebrate the conquering of the West rarely pay homage to the indigenous people who were dispossessed and displaced or to the natural environment sacrificed for global capitalism. The history of development on the Olympic Peninsula is no exception.

Mapes's nicely crafted volume relies on primary historical documents, oral histories, and an outstanding collection of photographs, many of which she obtained from tribal families. Her use of historic photos to tell the story of Tse-whit-zen and the Klallam people is one of the strongest elements of her...