By Micheal Rios, Tulalip News
High in the Cascade Mountains, where pavement gives way to gravel and the everyday sights and sounds of civilization slowly disappear behind a wall of evergreens, a treasured sign of late summer has returned. The huckleberries are ready!
Tulalip tribal members once again have access to swədaʔx̌ali, Lushootseed for “Place of Mountain Huckleberries,” marking the beginning of a precious harvesting window that lasts only a few weeks. For those willing to make the journey into the upper Skykomish River watershed, the reward is measured in purple stained fingertips, buckets of berries, and an opportunity to participate in a cultural practice carried forward since time immemorial.
Nearly 5,000 feet above sea level, swədaʔx̌ali encompasses approximately 1,280 acres within the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. Through years of cooperation between the Tulalip Tribes and U.S. Forest Service, the area has become an important co-stewardship landscape where treaty rights, traditional knowledge and modern resource management meet.
Mountain huckleberry has long been an important food, medicine, and trade item for Coast Salish peoples. Generations before highways and Forest Service roads reached these mountains, Native families traveled into high elevation gathering areas when the berries ripened toward summer’s end. Knowledge of where to gather and when to gather was passed from one generation to another.
That relationship with the land remains at the heart of swədaʔx̌ali. In previous Tulalip News coverage, elder and cultural knowledge keeper Inez Bill explained the importance simply, “Huckleberry is a superfood and medicine to our people.”
Inez shared how ancestors knew their gathering places intimately, including the plants that grew alongside the berries and how each resource could be used. Caring for the environment was also a part of maintaining culture itself and ensuring those resources remained available for future generations.
“Through the teachings of how we value, take care of and utilize our environment, we pass down our history and traditions, and what is important to the cultural lifeways of our people. This connection to the land enables us to know who we are as a people,” added Inez.
That responsibility is visible throughout the huckleberry fields today. Mountain huckleberries flourish in open landscapes, particularly areas shaped by natural disturbance. Long before contemporary forestry practices, Indigenous people intentionally used fire to maintain productive gathering grounds. Controlled burns cleared competing vegetation, returned nutrients to the soil, and helped create the sunny openings where huckleberry plants thrive.
Tulalip Forestry has increasingly incorporated that ancestral knowledge into its management of swədaʔx̌ali. Forest Manager Tisen Fryberg explained that restoring fire to the landscape became a priority after seeing the berry fields struggling several years ago. Controlled burns and the clearing of accumulated slash have since helped reduce competing plants while allowing huckleberry bushes greater access to sunlight and nutrients.
“Using fire and controlled burns in the same way our ancestors did ensures that the berries will continue to be abundant,” Tisen said prior to the 2025 harvest season. “This is what planning for the seventh generation is all about.”
Last summer, those efforts were already producing noticeable results. Berries were reported to be larger and more plentiful throughout portions of swədaʔx̌ali offering a tangible example of what can happen when generations of Indigenous ecological knowledge are once again allowed to guide stewardship.
Every handful gathered represents continuity. Children picking beside their parents and grandparents are learning through experience. They see which berries are ripe and which should remain on the bush. They learn patience while searching beneath leaves for flashes of red, blue and deep purple. They hear family stories while filling containers one berry at a time.
Last year, the Tulalip Lushootseed Department made its own harvesting trip shortly after the fields opened. Department manager Natosha Gobin shared that berries gathered at swədaʔx̌ali are incorporated into lessons about traditional harvesting and food processing, served during community events and used for culturally meaningful gifts.
“Reconnecting with the spaces that our ancestors traveled to harvest brings a sense of belonging,” shared Natosha. “It’s an emotional connection that helps increase our desire to continue learning, teaching and honoring the ways of life that helped our ancestors thrive, since time immemorial.”
That connection is especially meaningful because the opportunity is so brief. Mountain huckleberries generally ripen toward the end of summer and into early fall, leaving only a matter of weeks when conditions are ideal. Unlike grocery store produce available year-round, their limited season demands that harvesters follow the calendar of the land.
When they are ready, you go. When the season passes, you wait until next year. That fleeting availability is part of what makes the annual opening of swədaʔx̌ali special. Each August brings another opportunity for Tulalip families to renew a relationship extending countless generations into the past while simultaneously ensuring those teachings continue into the future.
