Native American Heritage Month

Masselow's, East, and EPIC will offer a nod to customary cuisine with special menu items featuring Pacific Northwest ingredients like bison, trout, and huckleberries.

The Kalispel Tribe’s story has been one of resilience, innovation, and generosity. For thousands of years, our people have lived along ntx̣ʷe (in-tweh), the Pend Oreille and Clark Fork rivers, and their many tributaries. The reservation was established by executive order in 1914 from President Woodrow Wilson, and today, it is comprised of over 4,500 acres, with an additional 40 acres of trust land in Airway Heights—the site of Northern Quest.

The Tribe’s reservation is located near Cusick, Washington, along the Pend Oreille River and the foothills of the Selkirk Mountains.

The Kalispel Tribe's aboriginal lands stretched across millions of acres, including what are now the states of Washington, Idaho, and Montana. Surrounding the Pend Oreille River, the lands are abundant with mountains, lakes, rivers, and prairies.

The Salish language is an important cultural element that ties the Kalispel Tribe to its history. Through effort and intention, a new generation of Salish speakers has given life to the language that was once at risk of extinction.

The Kalispel Indians were semi-nomadic hunters, diggers, and fishermen, and were often called the “river paddlers.” They crafted the unique sturgeon-nosed canoe to navigate the Pend Oreille River and support a proud nomadic lifestyle.

Since 1879, it’s estimated that over 100,000 Native Americans attended Catholic residential boarding schools. Indigenous children were often forced or influenced into attending these boarding schools with hopes of assimilating tribal members into the “American way of life.” Many never returned home.

In recent years, the remains of thousands of Indigenous people, many of them children, were recovered from unmarked graves on the sites of former boarding schools in Canada. As a community, Native Americans are pushing for a similar investigative process to take place in the United States.

In 2013, a former residential school student created Orange Shirt Day to commemorate these tragic events. September 30 is reserved as Orange Shirt Day, a time to honor the healing of survivors and family members and remember those who never returned home.

The red handprint is a national symbol for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. Often painted across the face and mouth, it is used as a symbolic representation of the voices of those who've been silenced. 

#MMIW
#NoMoreStolenSisters
#NotInvisible