“When we talk about land, land is part of who we are. It’s a mixture of our blood, our past, our current, and our future. We carry our ancestors in us, and they’re around us. As you all do.”
Mary Lyons (Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe)
At Dog Adventures Northwest, we have the profound privilege and honor of living and working on the beautiful land of the Pacific Northwest. We have the freedom to take dogs on adventures in nature, to train and work throughout the several Oregon counties, and to make a living by moving through colonized space.
We understand the importance of naming this colonialism and the systemic injustice that brought us to live and work on these lands today. We understand that we have benefited from the unconscionable genocide, relocation, and assimilation that still impacts Indigenous communities today.
We recognize that the land we are on in Portland, Oregon and Multnomah County sits on the unceded territory of Indigenous peoples from the Multnomah, Wasco, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Tumwater, Cowlitz, Bands of Chinook, Tualatin Kalapuya, Molalla, and many other tribes that made their homes along the Columbia (Nch’i-Wana) and Willamette (Whilamut) Rivers.
We recognize that our Base Camp property on Sauvie Island was stolen from the 3,400 year-round residents of Multnomah people of the Chinook Nation, a population almost completely eradicated by malaria and smallpox outbreaks after the arrival of white people.
We recognize that Indigenous peoples in the Portland area are currently 70,000 strong and are descended from more than 380 tribes.
We extend our deepest thanks to the Indigenous people who have been stewarding the land since long before white settlers colonized it, and we look to Indigenous leaders for guidance on how to properly care for the land today.
We invite our community to join us in educating itself, and also in working to undo some of the harm that white colonialism has done to the Original People of this land. We pledge to donate monthly to the following Indigenous-led organizations that are working to uplift Indigenous communities, and encourage our community to do the same:
To find out more about the people who inhabited the land around you, visit https://native-land.ca/
Chinook lodge by Richard W. Dodson, after a drawing by the U.S. Exploring Expedition’s Alfred Agate (source: Britannica)