Friends of Tryon Creek

With its lush plant life, multi-layered tree canopy and fish-bearing streams, Tryon Creek State Natural Area offers a glimpse of what Portland looked like pre-colonization. But when Gabe Sheoships began working there in 2016, he was surprised to see that the park’s educational materials only focused on the past 150 years.

Sheoships, Education Director at Friends of Tryon Creek and a Cayuse/Walla Walla citizen, set out to change that perspective by sharing the landscape’s Indigenous story, which begins thousands of years prior—and still continues today.

“A lot of school groups tend to think that tribes are no longer here, not practicing their traditional values, in a place like Tryon,” he says.

With support from the Gray Family Foundation, Sheoships conducts numerous educational workshops that help visitors like students, teachers, other tribal members and community leaders to see the area’s ecology through a cultural lens.

Instead of a linear, westernized view of the ecosystem, Sheoships encourages a relational view that allows the landscape to speak to visitors throughout the seasons, through change and renewal.

“This [landscape] is something that we’re all a part of, a dynamic moving system and world,” he says.

The workshops delve into which traditional First Foods where provided when, including salmon, wild game, plants, berries, roots like camas and wapato, and of course, fresh water.

With Sheoship’s leadership, Friends of Tryon Creek has become a regional leader in bringing traditional ways of knowing to northwest history and ecology curriculum. With partners including the Native American Youth and Family Center, Cottonwood School, Parrott Creek Child and Family Services and many others, the workshops host hundreds of educators and students each year, and that number continues to grow.

With Sheoship’s leadership, Friends of Tryon Creek has become a regional leader in bringing traditional ways of knowing to northwest history and ecology curriculum. With partners including the Native American Youth and Family Center, Cottonwood School, Parrott Creek Child and Family Services and many others, they’ve hosted hundreds of educators and students, and that number continues to grow.

“We’ve been thankful to Gray, because we’ve had a multi-year approach,” Sheoships says, an approach that has allowed Tryon to build its internal space and classroom capacity, design curriculum and educational materials, implement lessons and trainings, and then evaluate and modify as needed. “They’ve been great supporters, very good to work with.”