GFU Built on Kalapuyan Land

Reported by: Aurora Biggers

NEWBERG, Ore. – George Fox University (GFU), established as Friends Pacific Academy in 1885, is built on Kalapuyan land.

According to This IS Kalapuyan Land, an exhibition in Five Oaks Museum by Steph Littlebird Fogel, Kalapuya (pronounced “cal-uh-poo-yuh”) is “the name given to the tribe made up of related bands of people who lived in the Willamette valley and spoke similar dialects from the same language family.”

The Kalapuyan people are a part of The Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon, a federally recognized group that includes more than 30 other tribes and bands.

The Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community’s site records that ratified and unratified treaties between the Tribes and the United States Government from 1853 through 1855 “resulted in the forced removal of tribal members from their ancestral homelands,” in what is widely known as the trail of tears. The Tribe is active throughout its ancestral homelands but is located in western Oregon where it has a 11,500-acre reservation in Yamhill County. There are approximately 5,400 enrolled tribal members.

Fogel’s exhibition explains that the Atfalati, pronounced “at-fall-uh-tee,” were the northernmost band of the Kalapuya who lived along the Tualatin River in present day Washington County. Pacific University’s Hillsboro and Forest Grove campuses are also located on the land of the Atfalati band, which Pacific University cites on their website.

Wood-Mar Hall 1920. Photo courtesy: The Archives

GFU, however, does not state that the university is built on Kalapuyan land. The university’s website relates GFU’s history as “the oldest Christian university in Oregon.”

More than 125 years ago, according to the history and heritage of GFU, evangelical Quaker pioneers helped settle the “rich and fruitful Chehalem Valley of Oregon, which is now known for its premier vineyards.”

These settlers, concerned with the education of their children, founded Friends Pacific Academy in 1885, overlapping with forced removal of tribal members from Kalapuyan land.

Fogel’s exhibition, This IS Kalapuyan Land, “prompts critical thinking around representation of Indigenous history and identity in non-Indigenous institutions.”

Fogel annotated panels from the museum’s prior exhibit on Kalapuyan peoples, which were “riddled with errors, erasures, stereotypes, and scientific misinformation,” curated contemporary Native artwork into the exhibition, and added historical content from David G. Lewis, PhD, who “is a preeminent scholar on Western Oregon tribes.”

Together, Fogel and Lewis recounted the history of the Willamette Valley and the intergenerational trauma of the Atfalati-Kalapuya. According to their records, in 1850, The Donation Claim Act granted land to homesteaders in the Oregon territory, including lands that the Kalapuya had occupied for thousands of years.

“One of the problems with settler encroachment on Indian lands was that Indians were not even considered ‘people,’ much less thought to have ‘laws.’ For many settlers, this is the situation, for others, like miners, their intentions were to acquire gold at any cost, regardless of whom they impacted or where they trespassed,” Lewis wrote below The Donation Claim Act’s description.

Then, several treaties established the Grand Ronde Reservation, where the Kalapuya and other Indian tribes had to move.

This land acknowledgement resource, sent to The Crescent by Emma Hodges, a senior at GFU and a Tututni, Chetco, and Tolowa Native, shows where Kalapuyan and Atfalati land are located, the same land where other maps would be labeled “Newberg” and “Yamhill County.”

This IS Kalapuyan Land can be accessed online here. Issue five of The Crescent will continue this story.