Mount Baker | Koma Kushan

Indigenous History of Koma Kulshan

We acknowledge we gather upon the ancestral lands of the Nooksack, Nlaka’pamux, Lummi, Upper Skagit, Salish, Cayuse, Umatilla, and Walla Walla tribes. These communities have lived on and stewarded the lands surrounding Koma Kulshan since time immemorial, and continue to do so today. We recognize that this land acknowledgement is one small step toward true allyship and we commit to uplifting the voices, experiences, and histories of the Indigenous people of this land and beyond.

Ages before the mountain was given the name Mount Baker by European explorers in 1792, Koma Kulshan was an important landmark and resource for the Nooksack, Lummi, Salish, Clallam, and many other indigenous tribes of the Pacific Northwest. Through the late 1800’s, Koma Kulshan, or Kulshan, was an active volcano that rumbled and thundered, alive to the people around it. Not only is the mountain an awe inspiring landmark, but it also has deep cultural and historic value as well. Kulshan comes from a Lummi phrase with two meanings: “Great White One” and “Struck by Thunder.” Lummi history shares that the mountain was struck by an angry spirit, leaving a wound that bled, burned, and smoked. The two names demonstrate the two emotional states of the mountain– still and white, and angry and erupting. While this name has gained the most recognition, many different indigenous tribes have their own names for the mountain, as well as their own stories for how it came to be.

Indigenous histories show connections between the many peaks of the Cascades. A Lummi story tells us that the mountain Kulshan had two wives. One wife, Dŭh-hwähk, became jealous of the other and threatened to leave if he would not choose her over the other. Kulshan called her bluff, and pride alone forced a heartbroken Dŭh-hwähk to go. She went far away, but continued to look back at the mountain she loved as she left, straining to grow taller and taller as Kulshan became harder to see– this is why the peak of Takhoma, later given the European name “Mount Rainier,” is visible from the peak of Kulshan.

History of Western Washington Tribal Lands

Since time immemorial, native tribes of Washington have inhabited the land on and around Koma Kulshan. The Nooksack, Lummi, Upper Skagit, and Coast Salish tribes are some of those that call the areas surrounding Kulshan home today. These tribes were forced out of the area in 1855 with the The Treaty of Point Elliott, in which much of western Washington was exchanged to maintain a small number of rights and practices, and confined to reservations. A large number of these people chose to resist and stay. Many of the Nooksack and Upper Skagit refused to go, with the Upper Skagit assembling in order to prevent settlers from claiming their land. The Nooksack were to join the Lummi reservation, but many stayed by Kulshan. Eventually they were able to stay in homesteads on very small portions of their traditional lands, but they were not granted the same freedoms they had before, or the same political powers of reservations. They were not recognized as a tribe by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and could not vote or organize. In 1970 the tribe gained federal recognition, and reclaimed additional fishing rights.

Today, fishing remains an important cultural and economic resource for the many of the area’s indigenous tribes. Both the Lummi and Nooksack work to restore salmon and other fish populations, with fish hatcheries and efforts to rebuild past fish ecosystems. Throughout the early 2000’s, tribes such as the Lummi and Upper Skagit began reclaiming their homelands, slowly buying back the land that had been sold to non-Indians throughout the early 1900’s.