Culture

The Tulalip Foundation supports culturally important projects like the Hibulb Cultural Center.

The Hibulb Cultural Center is a place where the history of the Tulalip Tribes can be preserved and protected. A place where the spirit and the knowledge of the Tulalip people can be passed on to today’s youth.

The Hibulb Cultural Center is approximately 23,000 square feet with a 42-acre natural history preserve. The interactive cultural center features a main exhibit, a temporary exhibit, two classrooms, a longhouse, a research library, and a gift shop. The Hibulb Cultural Center also features a fully certified collections and archaeological repository.

Building a cultural center has been a dream of the Tulalip Tribes for more than 30 years. The Tulalip Foundation has been an instrumental part in realizing this dream through a massive three-phase process:

• Phase I: Construction of a 10,000 square foot collection facility building to store and preserve cultural artifacts (completed June 2007).
• Phase II: Construction of a 23,000 square foot cultural center with a traditional longhouse (opened on August 19, 2011).
• Phase III: Establishment of a 42-acre natural history preserve (ongoing).

Ongoing Projects

CONSERVATION

The collection is the heart of any museum. The collection of the Tulalip Tribes contains massive carved story posts, canoes as well as cedar items, historic photographs, archives, archaeology and textiles. These items are integral and vital to telling the history of the Tulalip Tribes. Our collections are conserved and cared for on a daily basis. Donations to our conservation program will help us treat, stabilize, document and care for our current and future collection and also provide educational training opportunities for student conservators.

NATURAL HISTORY PRESERVE

The 42-acre Natural History Preserve is Phase III of the Hibulb Cultural Center. This remarkable piece of land includes about fifty percent estuary wetland and represents some of the least disturbed intertidal ecosystems and habitat in the Snohomish River estuary. Donations for this project will help fund large scale environmental restoration projects, walking paths, an observational platform to overlook the estuary, interpretative signage and various gardens that will supply traditional foods and medicines to Tulalip Tribes members.

OPERATIONS

Donations toward operations will help keep our education and library programs functional and will assist with providing valuable research and archival resources on Native cultures and the environment to teachers, artists, scholars and collectors. These programs will also include community events such as demonstrations, lectures, poetry readings, family days, film screenings and workshops.

TEMPORARY EXHIBITIONS

Donations to our exhibition program will assist in the acquisition of traveling exhibits from other museums, and will support the development and curation of new changing exhibits in our 2,000 sq. ft. temporary gallery. Bringing in new exhibitions will keep our content fresh, making sure that our current visitors and members remain engaged as well as attracting new visitors.