A group of community leaders has begun making plans for an Edmonds Indigenous Walking Tour, focused on Native landmarks in the city.

Community leader Diana White presented ideas for the tour at a Thursday meeting at the Edmonds Waterfront Center. The event would debut on Indigenous People Day, Oct. 13.

The self-guided walking tour would include maps, booklets and a website that include the artist’s name, sponsor (if applicable), materials used and the year made.

As an enrolled member of the Prairie Band of Potawatomi Indians and of Cherokee descent, White said she was inspired by the University of Washington’s Indigenous Walking Tour two years ago that featured Indigenous presence on campus, including artwork and medicinal plants.

Created by Owen L. Oliver, a member of the Chinook people and Isleta Pueblo who graduated from UW in 2021, the tour tells the story of Indigenous knowledge systems tied to the natural landscape around the UW campus.

White said that when she and her husband Stephen moved to Edmonds about 25 years ago, there wasn’t any Indigenous art. However, with the help of Art Walk Edmonds, Edmonds Mural Society and Edmonds Waterfront Center’s leadership, more such artwork became visible in public.

“And I just realized that, you know, Edmonds has enough stuff that we could probably do our own walking tour,” White said.

White proposed several Indigenous landmarks for the walking tour that could include  a panel that describes the significance of the artwork or landmark. A QR code on the panel allows people to listen to interviews of the artists or learn the names of plants and the land in the Lushootseed language.

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White said the tour would start at the Waterfront Center’s welcoming figure Kaya’s Gift created by Coast Salish artist Ty Juvinel. Then the art inside the waterfront center would be the next stop, followed by the beach bufflehead panel and the Friendship Tree along the waterfront promenade.

White said that many people had mistaken the Friendship Tree as Indigenous art and thought it would be an opportunity to educate the differences between totem poles and other similar sculptures.

“Here’s the difference between a totem pole and here’s the difference between a welcoming figure,” White said. “These are the differences between the two. They’re not interchangeable.”

The next stop would be the spit at Brackett’s Landing where there would be a pole with multiple signs pointing to the location of different Coast Salish tribes. White said one sign could point north to the Lummi people or across the Puget Sound to the Suquamish. She said that there is no funding to build the signage yet.

Other stops would include the Sasquatch at Demetris restaurant, the mural “Before Edmonds” by artist Andy Eccleshall, the Edmonds Historical Museum panel carving “Marsh Life” and the “Journey of Salmon” mural. The octopus mural behind the Edmonds Amtrak train station would be the final destination.

Several other potential stops include the canoe at Civic Park, the Willow Creek Hatchery and the artwork at Swedish Edmonds Hospital lobby.

Retired college professor Thomas Murphy, who taught anthropology at Edmonds College, said that some parts of the walking tour should include the story of the Purcells, who were Squamish and one of the founding families of Edmonds. 

“They live right here on the beach…their property is the portion south of here, down to the old municipal site, and it was known at the time as the 10-Mile Beach site,” he said. “Their descendants are [still living] there.”

Lilyann Hendershot, who owns Edmonds’ Branding Iron, suggested a little library filled with storybooks related to local Indigenous people at the end of the tour. 

“I have children’s books that are Indigenous, and we had gotten one of them from Bellingham when we were just kind of going around little shops,” Hendershot said.

Other ideas include:

– Having a way for people to record that they have completed the entire walk

– A treasure hunt geocache

– Booklets that highlight the stops and Indigenous history, culture and language

White said that the budget for the Indigenous Walking Tour would be between $5,000 and $10,000. She said the next steps are to recruit people – including partnerships with local tribes – and to get committee assignments made.

Anyone would like to be involved with the walking tour may contact her at diana.white1@comcast.net.

“I want to acknowledge that we’re standing on the homelands of several Coast Salish tribes who’ve been stewards of this land for a very long time, and I hope that this project will help us show how the stewardship can pass on and live beyond our years,” White said.