First Friday Lecture: Buried Past Comes Alive

First Friday Lecture:
Buried Past Comes Alive

The August 6 First Friday Lecture will feature author Lynda Mapes and her book Breaking Ground: The Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe and the Unearthing of Tse-whit-zen Village. The program will be held in Port Townsend's historic City Council Chamber at 7:00 p.m. Admission is by donation and supports historical society programs.

Lynda Mapes is an award-winning journalist with more than twenty years' experience in newspaper reporting, much of it with the Seattle Times. Her book tells the dramatic story of the unearthing of the historic village on the Port Angeles waterfront.

In 2003, a backhoe operator hired by the state of Washington to dig a massive dry dock discovered what the world would soon learn he was working atop one of the oldest and largest Indian village sites ever found in the region. Eventually hundreds of burials were disturbed and 10,000 artifacts uncovered. Tribal members worked alongside state construction workers encountering more and more human remains including intact burials. Finally, in an unprecedented decision, the state agreed to find a new site.

Mapes spent more than a year interviewing tribal members, archaeologists, historians, city and state officials, and local residents and business leaders. She explores how the site was chosen and how the decisions were first made to proceed and then to abandon the project, as well as the aftermath and implications of those choices.