Western Washington University’s House of Healing opens doors to collaboration

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Western Washington University's House of Healing opens doors to collaboration

May 26, 2026

by Mary Gallagher

WWU Communications

Western's Lhaq 'temish-ew'xw e tse XwLemi' - House of Healing opened this month in a building already steeped in symbolism, cultural heritage and collaboration.

With a gathering hall, teaching kitchen, study lounges, outdoor garden for culturally significant Indigenous plants and a cooking area, the building will serve as a gathering, learning and cultural home for Indigenous students and community members.

"For Indigenous students, this is a sanctuary, a place where your identity is celebrated as a core of your academic journey," said WWU President Sabah Randhawa at the opening ceremony. "And it's an invitation for the broader campus to engage in a more authentic relationship with the history and the people of this region."

The House of Healing also puts action behind the words of the land acknowledgment that typically opens university gatherings, Randhawa said.

"It's an important practice of respect and remembrance, but we must always ask what comes after these words," Randhawa said. "The existence of this longhouse on our campus is an answer to that question. It's the visible recognition of Indigenous sovereignty and a reminder that our university's future is inextricably linked to the original stewards of this land."

Home to student meetings, guest lectures, community events and other gatherings, the building will be a place where Indigenous students can find a sense of community and shared culture, said Laural Ballew-Ses yehomia/tsi kuts bat soot (Swinomish), Western's executive director of American Indian/Alaska Native and First Nations Relations and Tribal Liaison to the President.

The House of Healing will also be a place of reciprocity, where people can learn from each other, regardless of their Indigenous heritage, Ballew said. It's something she's thought a lot about as we continue to recover from the pandemic.

"Who better to learn from than the Native people who have survived hundreds of years of trauma and disease and everything that has been done to eradicate them? But we're still here," Ballew said. "This home is for everyone to come in, keep it warm, have a cup of tea, break bread, and if you want to hear knowledge, we'll share it with you."

Cultural heritage and art are imbued throughout the building.

Lummi Nation artist Felix Solomon and Haida master woodcarver Ralph Bennett created "Sundog," the massive carved-cedar double front doors. The sundogs, double reflections of the sun setting over the water, represent the Lummi people's knowledge of their way of life, Solomon told the audience at the House of Healing opening.

Inside, Swinomish artist Kevin Paul has created two installations. On one wall he's mounted 29 paddles, one representing each federally recognized tribe in the state of Washington, and another wall with paddles carrying the names of donors who helped fund the longhouse.

Those donors included several tribes in Washington, including Lummi Nation, Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe, Muckleshoot Indian Tribe, Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, Stillaguamish Tribe of Indians, Suquamish Tribe and Tulalip Tribes.

The Washington State Legislature funded about $4.5 million for the building -- championed by State Rep. Debra Lekanoff (Tlingit). U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen also secured federal funding for the project.

The Mount Baker Foundation made a significant gift, and Whatcom Community Foundation, Whatcom Educational Credit Union, and several individuals supported the project as well.

The name of the building itself was bestowed by the Lummi Indian Business Council: Lhaq 'temish-ew'xw e tse XwLemi', which references Lummi Nation as descendants of the region's original tribes.

The building was designed by Rolluda Architects in Seattle and is inspired by the traditional cedar-plank structures that served as both multi-family homes and gathering places in Coast Salish Indigenous communities throughout the Pacific Northwest. The architects also worked with two advisory committees made up of tribal members: one was Indigenous students, staff, faculty and other Indigenous community members; the other was exclusively tribal elders, Ballew said.

"The architect really listened to what was important," Ballew said. "The interesting concept about the house is it's in a U-shape, and that is to represent hands raised because traditionally, hands raised is 'thank you,' or 'Hy'shque.'"

The location of the building is just as powerful.

"It's like that place was meant for that home," she said. "We didn't have to take down any trees, and it just fit in there perfectly. It's like it was always meant to be there."

Ballew says Indigenous members of the WWU community have been working to bring a longhouse to campus for more than 30 years.

But the roots of the project go back much further, said Bernie Thomas (Lummi), who earned his bachelor's degree from WWU in 1974 and a master's in education in 1992. In the fall of 1969, Thomas joined Nancy Wilbur as one of the founding members of what would later become the Native American Student Union. Decades later in 2016, he was also among the tribal elders NASU students called upon for support for the longhouse project and other key efforts to support Indigenous students.

"Were it not for those students 10 years ago, I don't think we necessarily would have the current opportunities to be educated in the longhouse," said Thomas, who shared his gratitude for Education Professor Kristen French (Blackfeet/Gros Ventre), former Woodring College of Education faculty Anna Lees (Odawa) and their support for Native students.

Kali Chargualaf (Suquamish), a 2018 graduate, remembers French wrapping her in a hug after she nervously attended her first meeting of NASU. Years later, Chargualaf became co-chair of NASU.

Chargualaf came to Western after hearing the land acknowledgement during a tour of campus, she said at the opening ceremony for the House of Healing. She turned to her mother in shock, she told the gathering.

"It was the first time either of us have ever heard this statement in any institution, company, organization -- ever. From that point forward I knew this is where I needed to be," she said.

"If something as simple as a land acknowledgement allowed me to see my future here at Western, imagine the power this longhouse is going to hold for current and future students," she said.

The Point Elliott Treaty of 1855 between the U.S. government and the tribes of the Puget Sound area included not just fishing rights for tribes, but provisions for healthcare, education and welfare, Thomas said.

"As we open up the longhouse, I hope there's an understanding of an educational obligation on the part of Western and other regional universities and state agencies to honor those treaties," he said.

The former director of Education at Lummi Nation School, Thomas said the educational opportunities referenced in the treaty should include instruction for tribal members to become fluent in Indigenous languages.

"The longhouse is espousing an opportunity to be educated under one roof in peace," he said. "What I would convey to each of us, including students there at Western now and in the future, is that for American Indian students there is a call for university-educated tribal citizens to band together across tribes. We're legally divided into separate tribes now, but our history teaches us that we're all part of one bigger family, here in the Northwest particularly."

The longhouse's roots are also entwined with the first member of Lummi Nation to earn a bachelor's degree, Mary Ellen Hillaire, '56, who later became the first female faculty member of The Evergreen State College. Hillaire launched Evergreen's Native American Studies Program and is credited with articulating the need to have a culturally appropriate building on campus, like a longhouse. Evergreen's House of Welcome was completed in 1995, among the first of several such longhouses on campuses in Washington, Oregon and British Columbia.

When the land for Western's longhouse received a ceremonial blessing two years ago, Randhawa apologized on behalf of Western for past racist teaching that harmed the Lummi community, and for not taking action to stop it.

Randhawa reaffirmed that apology in his remarks last week.

"We don't look back to just dwell on the past but to ensure it informs a better present," he said. "The House of Healing is more than a name; it's an active mandate for this institution."

That public apology was significant, Ballew said.

"That said a lot, not only to Lummi, but to all of the tribes," she said. "That was historical. It's made a huge impact. We're not done yet, but this is a beginning."

Thanks in part to that apology and the House of Healing project in general, collaborative work between WWU and area tribes is "gaining traction," said Visiting Assistant Professor of Education Will Makóyiisááminaa (Blackfeet).

Much of that work is being done by Indigenous faculty members, Makóyiisááminaa said.

For example, Makóyiisááminaa and other Woodring faculty are developing a partnership with Muckleshoot Tribal College to offer a four-year Indigenous Doctorate in Educational Leadership.

"For Muckelshoot Tribal College to invite us to be in a partnership with them," Makóyiisááminaa said. "I feel very humbled and I think, hopefully, the university does, too."

The program would be based at Muckleshoot Tribal College and would prepare students to be superintendents or program leaders in tribes and related communities.

"When we think about tribal communities here in Washington state and all across the nation, we're looking for self-governance, self-determination, tribal sovereignty and educational sovereignty, which is this notion that tribal communities should be able to experience education in a way that they want to experience education," said Makóyiisááminaa, who graduated from Western's Doctorate in Educational Leadership program in 2023. "We're trying to create an environment where Native students are seeing themselves represented in Native faculty and through Native methodologies that they can relate to, where they have a sense of belonging and can thrive."

The program's administrative details are making their way through both WWU and Muckleshoot Tribal College, Makóyiisááminaa said. In the meantime, faculty are continuing to build those relationships. For example, he and French recently presented a leadership workshop at Muckleshoot Tribal College, he said.

Next, Woodring faculty are establishing an Indigenous Advisory Board made up of tribal elders and educators to provide feedback on success strategies for Indigenous students and proposed coursework that has an Indigenous component, Makóyiisááminaa said.

The House of Healing, and the collaborative work that has taken place to bring it to fruition, has repercussions across campus.

Western's work to comply with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) has also influenced Western's reputation in tribal communities and helped smooth the way for more continued collaboration with tribes, said Environmental Sciences Professor Marco Hatch (Samish).

"With the House of Healing opening, it opens up a space for those collaborative meetings," Hatch said, "but also a space for a celebration of students."

Most of Hatch's research work is deeply enmeshed with the work of tribes. For example, he's developing tools and technologies to help tribes and First Nations in the U.S. and Canada identify and map ancestral clam gardens - both to protect and to possibly restore those ancient aquaculture sites.

Hatch came to Western from Northwest Indian College in part to mentor WWU grad students who had earned their bachelor's degrees in Native environmental science from Northwest Indian College. One of those graduate students, Amy Cline, defended her master's thesis in 2024 at Western in a Coast Salish ceremony, he said.

"We did that in the VU, and the VU is great - you can look out over the water - but wouldn't it have been cool to do it in the House of Healing?" he said. "Opening those spaces where students are being held up in a cultural way and an academic way that is more welcoming for their families and their community -- I think will change the perspective of how Western is viewed."

Another of Hatch's grad students, Emily Ralston, studies camas, a starchy root vegetable that rivals salmon in its importance Coast Salish food traditions, Hatch said. She began by reaching out to about 20 Indigenous experts in ceremonial and tending camas practices to learn their most pressing concerns: pesticide residue was near the top.

Hatch and his students have been tending a camas patch on campus for a decade. The plants, including a relatively rare white morph variety, were originally planted elsewhere in what was probably an abandoned research project, Hatch said. But when the patch was set to be destroyed in the late '90s, faculty scooped them up and planted them out behind the Environmental Studies building, where they grew unnoticed for years among weeds and blackberries.

When Hatch arrived on campus in 2016, he and his students started tending the camas patch in earnest, pulling out the weeds to give it light. Now the plants grow in abundance.

"I wanted to have a spot where we could tend it right there, and we can make it available for people to harvest it for food," he said, "or in this case, transplant it to the House of Healing."

Recently, NASU members joined Hatch's Indigenous resource management class and dug up about 100 bulbs and planted them with about 2,000 seeds in the House of Healing's garden of plants for Indigenous science, art, medicine and cooking.

After years of neglect, followed by a time of intentional nurturing and careful placement by Indigenous students in a spot devoted to culture, healing and education, that camas could thrive in its permanent home for many generations to come.

Photos by Sean Curtis Patrick and Luke Hollister