land acknowledgement

The lands comprising the Yakona Nature Preserve & Learning Center encompass a portion of the ancestral homeland of the Yaqo’n people, who have lived in the region for millennia. Contact with European trade ships and fur trappers introduced smallpox, measles, and other diseases for which indigenous people had no immunities, and racial injustices led to outright massacres of scores of native people. Consequently, by the middle of the 19th century, approximately 80% of the Yaqo’n population was eliminated. What had been as many as 700 individuals was reduced to approximately 80.

White settlers colonizing what was to become the State of Oregon in the 19th century led to well-documented genocide across the land, from which the Yaqo’n did not escape. The creation of the Siletz Reservation in 1855 was ostensibly intended to provide indigenous people a safe haven, and many tribes from across western Oregon and northern California were rounded up and forcibly moved to it. The local Yaqo’n were now living amongst other tribes who had different languages, customs, and ways of life. 

The promise of protection was short lived – by 1865, the federal government carved the Yaquina watershed out of the Siletz Reservation and opened it to white colonists, who were allowed to take the homes of the Yaqo’n and other indigenous people living on the Siletz Reservation for their own. Marginalized, the native people lived and worked among the recent immigrants, but by the beginning of the 20th century, the Yaqo’n had been reduced to less than 15 individuals. Today, one large extended family enrolled with the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians can trace their ancestry to the Yaqo’n people.

We must never forget how this country was taken from its indigenous populations. With every European “discovery” of the riches this land offered, the injustices of genocide, relocation and subsequent habitat destruction followed. The story of the Yaqo’n and other indigenous peoples across the state and nation has been repeated innumerable times. With respect to those who have gone before, the Yakona Nature Preserve & Learning Center will ensure that all who visit are educated in the history of the land and its indigenous people, and welcomed and embraced as stewards and partners in its mission.