The relationship between greenhouse gas emissions and climate change and the dangers of global warming are widely documented. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was signed by all United Nations Member States in 2015 and calls for the “widest possible international cooperation aimed at accelerating the reduction of global greenhouse gas emissions” with the aim of “holding the increase in global average temperature below 2 °C”. What role do counties have in reducing greenhouse gas emissions? This project aims to develop a granular model of carbon storage and flux in Multnomah County to inform policy interventions that bring the county closer to meeting the goals outlined in the 2050 Climate Action Plan adopted by the City of Portland and Multnomah County in 2009 with a goal of reducing community-wide greenhouse gas emissions 80% by 2050, with a more ambitious goal of being a net-zero emitter of greenhouse gas. One of the first steps in developing a jurisdictional level greenhouse gas accounting is an inventory and projection of carbon stock change. Our study hopes to assess the feasibility of various methods in predicting carbon storage and flux on forested lands in Multnomah County, compare our results against Forest Inventory Analysis (FIA) estimates and gain a better understanding of carbon storage and flux as it relates to land ownership and management on public and private forest lands.

Hybrid landscapes are the colonial, regulated plots of land (like reservations), that Native peoples have adapted to ultimately create new senses of Indian self-hood, through their ability to survive and thrive, despite the colonial process that displaces them to those regulated lands. The vanishing Indian narrative is one example of the colonial violence enacted through those regulated spaces as Western institutions and discourses confine Native peoples to notions of the past and primitivity, to ultimately claim that they have vanished in the wake of modernity. And while Western museums have helped perpetuate the vanishing Indian narrative, tribal museums have combated this harmful narrative. Museums, as institutions that present knowledge to the general public, are sites that can present counter-narratives and tribal communities can use these spaces to present proper representations of themselves. One such tribal museum is the site of my research project. The Suquamish Museum is located on the Port Madison Indian Reservation and opened in 1983. This research is interested in how this museum has made, and continues to make, a difference for the Suquamish community and particularly analyzes the Museum’s relationship to the reservation. Over several months I have spent time in the Museum and researched the Museum’s history through its grants, reports, programs, and exhibits. I argue that, as an institution that has continued to adapt to the community’s needs, the Suquamish Museum has facilitated the construction and continued development of the reservation as a hybrid landscape through owned representation as a means of confronting the vanishing Indian narrative, thus perpetuating Native agency and sovereignty. This research is important because looking at the Suquamish tribe as its own entity, with their own representations, addresses the colonial violence that treats all Indigenous peoples as homogenous, unadaptable peoples from the “past,” ultimately highlighting their agency as place-makers.