“Making It Right:
Plants, Tribal Traditions, and the Mountain”
Practices and Effects of Nisqually Tribal Plant Gathering at Mount Rainier National Park
Greg Burtchard
College of Liberal Studies Faculty Fellow
Wednesday, March 11, 2026
6:30pm (PST)
Xavier Hall, Room 201 (Philip Nordquist Lecture Hall)
For information: Dr. Bradford Andrews, Director, Anthropology Studies
About the Lecture:
Plants, Tribal Traditions and the Mountain is the culmination of 15 years of cooperation and research between the Nisqually Tribe of Indians and Mount Rainier National Park. It focuses on the long-standing relationship between Indigenous people and the landscapes, plants, and animals of Mount Rainier and on efforts to re-establish a bit of that relationship—traditional plant gathering—lost to NPS regulations in the 20th Century. The book’s major sections provide archaeological and historical background to indigenous presence on the mountain, and on research methods and results related to practices and environmental effects of traditional plant gathering activities reinstated at Mount Rainier in 1998. After determining that traditional gathering methods tend to preserve the viability of affected plant populations, the book recommends ways in which comparably benign methods might be extended to a broader suite of traditionally used plants for which traditional techniques may have been lost through population loss and acculturation practices during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Making it Right presentation addresses the nature and duration of precontact Indigenous use of Mount Rainier and its resources; and on research results that examine environmental effects of traditional plant gathering practices, clarifying how those practices function to preserve the viability of affected plant communities through time.
About the Lecturer:
Greg Burtchard completed graduate studies in anthropology at the University of New Mexico in 1975. During the years since, he has conducted archaeological and ethnographic research with a number of government, consulting, and educational institutions in New Mexico, Hawai`i, and the Pacific Northwest. These include the Bureau of Land Management in Albuquerque, Washington State University, University of Washington, Portland State University, International Archaeological Research Institute in Honolulu, and the National Park Service at Mount Rainier National Park. During his 16 years at Mount Rainier, he served as chief park archeologist, implementing an archaeological research design he developed as a consultant in 1998, and overseeing the park’s archaeological program generally. As the park’s tribal liaison, he worked to improve relations and functional interaction between the park and six traditionally affiliated tribes. He has been affiliated with Pacific Lutheran University as a Faculty Fellow in the College of Liberal Studies (Anthropology) since 2021.
