The winter storm of 1969 to 1970 that began the process of exposing the buried longhouses arrived at a specific moment in American history.

The late 1960s and early 1970s were years of significant activity in the broader Native American political movement, years in which Indigenous tribes across the country were reasserting their legal rights, their cultural sovereignty, and their relationships to their ancestral lands.

The Makah Tribe’s response to the storm exposure was grounded in this context.

The tribe recognized what the exposed materials represented: the physical remains of their own cultural heritage, emerging from a location they had always known was significant.

The decision to contact Washington State University rather than to excavate independently reflected a practical calculation about the technical resources needed for a waterlogged organic site, but it was a decision made by the tribe, in the context of their own understanding of what the site contained.