In honor of Indigenous Peoples’ Day, Highline College decided to ring in their 10th annual observation of the holiday by holding a multifaceted celebration on Oct. 12.

Festivities began at 9 a.m. in Building 2 with elder Roger Fernandes of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe telling traditional tales such as “The Fly”, a long passed down story about how even the smallest community members can make a difference. “Our little ones are as important as anyone,” Fernandes said. “We must bring them to the struggle in a good way.”

The Bill family of the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe took over following Fernandes’ closing.

Since 2020, the Muckleshoot Tribal College (MTC) has partnered with the University of Washington Tacoma to facilitate a doctoral program.

The 2026 cohort graduated in June, and there are plans for a partnership with Western Washington University starting in the spring of 2027.

In addition to having created an opportunity for 29 total Indigenous students to earn their doctorates, somewhere between 85 and 90 students have been certified through MTC’s partnership with Green River College this year.

Justice Bill, the college’s Instructional Coordinator, educated the audience on the history of this land and its Native people. The Muckleshoot people lived in the area of what is now considered the cities of Auburn and Kent, along the banks of the Green and White Rivers. Their way of life was mostly hunt-and-gather, with an emphasis on marine animals found in the Puget Sound watershed such as salmon and shellfish.

Depending on the animal being sought after, different canoes, paddles, and even rowing techniques were utilized to maximize the chance of a catch. This practice had been decimated by colonialism, as canoes were burned by settlers when they first invaded the area, but the Black River Canoe Family has been steadily bringing back the tradition since 1989. “A group of us get together in Birch Bay, way up by the Canadian border, and then we canoe down to the Puget Sound. It’s a tradition to revive our people’s connection to the saltwater,” said Bill.

Dr. Bill’s daughter, Elise, conjoined the past and present by giving a brief lesson on how to say basic words in the Muckleshoot language, southern Lushootseed. “Lushootseed is a language with lots of nature sounds, the sounds of the wind, of the water, that’s our language,” she said.

This dialect of Lushootseed, despite having 42 letters and using throat muscles that the English language does not, is deceptively easy to understand. For example, the southern Lushootseed word for “crow” mimics the sound of a crow cawing.

Before the event wrapped at 11 a.m., attendees were encouraged to take home nettle tea. Made from a notoriously painful plant, the tea is actually used to alleviate various aches and pains, from infections to cancer. The Muckleshoot, and other tribes from the surrounding area, have been utilizing the medicinal benefits of stinging nettles for countless years, plus, it’s believed that being stung by the nettles means that the plants are keeping their victim accountable to their community, human and non-human alike.

But what is Indigenous Peoples’ Day and why is it celebrated? To answer that, keep two things in mind: Columbus Day and, in the case of Native Americans, the “Vanishing Indian Myth”.

Before Indigenous Peoples’ Day became a state-recognized holiday, it was known nationally as Columbus Day, named for the colonizer who accidentally stumbled upon the Americas in around 1492. For many generations, Christopher Columbus was viewed as a brave explorer who settled unoccupied land on the far reaches of the globe, however, this is far from the truth.

As time went on, historians began to reconcile with the fact that Columbus was not a brave explorer, but a colonizer who exploited, tortured, and killed much of the Indigenous population. Gradually, awareness of Columbus’ inhumane treatment of these people have accelerated attempts to shift the attention to surviving Indigenous groups, of which there are many, in hopes of learning about their varied cultures and supporting them in decolonization efforts.

Plainly, the “Vanishing Indian Myth” is the inaccurate belief that all the Native Americans were wiped out by colonization and that none are alive. While colonization killed hundreds of thousands of Native people, there are still around 574 federally recognized tribes today, as well as countless nonrecognized bands.

That’s a lot of Native Americans alive in the modern age. Although all evidence points to the contrary, America believed in the “Vanishing Indian Myth” for hundreds of years, and some people still think it’s true. Native Americans must fight for recognition even in our current day because of propaganda attempting to discredit their existence.

That is why, when Dr. Denise Bill, Executive Director of the Muckleshoot Tribal College and Muckleshoot Indian Tribe member reflected on the meaning of this holiday, she said, “On Indigenous Peoples’ Day we celebrate that we’re still here, still alive. Indigenous people survived. You can do anything you can do to us, but we’ll still survive.”

In closing, Dr. Bill wanted to remind everyone of her message. “We’re all still here,” she reaffirmed, reminding us of the tribe’s fight with the U.S. government to retain stewardship of their land, their battle with smallpox, and the attempted erasure of their culture, “…we’re all around you. We may not all look the same, but we’re all around you.”