Returning to the Winter Storm

One winter in the late 1960s, a bank at Cape Alava slumped in the rain.

A storm had saturated the ground, and what had been held in place for 500 years began to shift.

Wooden objects that had not seen light since before any European ship had reached this coast emerged from the gray-green mud.

The Makah recognized what was happening and made a decision that would shape the next five decades of Northwest Coast archaeology.

They called for help in excavating the site, insisting on community control of the process and the collection, and the 11-year project that followed recovered more than 55,000 artifacts from six buried longhouses.