Tacoma will soon get 170+ new, distinctive street signs. Here’s what’s happening
Tacoma’s Eastside neighborhood soon will see a series of new street signs.
About 174 brown signs will be placed beneath existing green placards and depict honorary road names in the Puyallup Tribe of Indians’ native language.
The Tribe teamed up with the city on the effort. The City Council unanimously approved the plan Tuesday, Oct. 8 with two members, Joe Bushnell and Jamika Scott, absent.
The Twulshootseed language will now appear along 28 roadways and 62 intersections, according to a presentation during Tuesday’s council meeting.
Sylvia Miller, vice chairwoman of the Puyallup Tribal Council, spoke about the effort’s significance.
“Our lands were taken from us. [Our] children were taken from us. They were put into homes where they literally were abused — killed, some of them — for speaking the language,” Miller said at Tuesday’s meeting. “This gives an opportunity to make up for some of the things that have happened to us: the history, the things that have been taken.”
Mayor Victoria Woodards also presented Miller with a proclamation declaring Oct. 14 as Indigenous Peoples’ Day in Tacoma.
Six of the honorary street names are set to run south and north along Pioneer Way and Portland and Grandview avenues, according to a Puyallup Tribe press release. The remainder will run west and east, from 28th to 38th streets, including Roosevelt Avenue and Browning and T streets.
The new signs will have details on pronunciation and translations, per the release.
Supporters have praised the move as an opportunity to help revitalize the Twulshootseed language. A Sept. 20 City Council action memo notes that the signs will offer a “Puyallup creation story context to the Eastside of Tacoma” using names for various figures, places and objects.
Amber Sterud Hayward, who works for the Puyallup Tribal Language Program, told the City Council that the moment was about seven years in the making.
“These are all wonderful steps toward visibility and showing that the Puyallup Tribe of Indians is still here,” Hayward said. “We are still here on this land. We still speak our language, we still participate in our cultural ways and ancestral ways, and this just gets to extend that to the city of Tacoma and anybody that comes through our reservation.”
When will the signs be installed?
The effort will cost nearly $161,150, allocated from the city’s Public Works Street Fund, according to the Sept. 20 action memo. The Tribe will reimburse the city for the cost.
Coming up: finalizing the graphic layouts, said city spokesperson Maria Lee. Then the city will nail down contractor services to make the signs and place them along intersections and roadways.
As of now, the whole process is estimated to wrap up by the end of March, Lee said.
Such signage can be found on the Puyallup Reservation’s roads, according to the Tribe’s press release. Future placards — complete with audio buttons, illustrations and a small story — will be featured in the reservation’s parks.
The Tribe is planning to launch a companion website that will offer additional info, according to the action memo.
During Tuesday’s council meeting, the mayor said the new installments will be situated near the Tribe’s administration building. As someone who grew up on the Eastside, she personally looks forward to seeing them in the neighborhood.
In a phone interview Wednesday, Woodards acknowledged the work of Miller and other Puyallup tribal members, in addition to city staff.
The city previously locked arms with the Tribe to rename the Puyallup River Bridge to the Fishing Wars Memorial Bridge in commemoration of the Tribe’s fight for fishing rights. Woodards noted that the Puyallup Tribe’s flag flies in council chambers, and that members acknowledge tribal lands ahead of each week’s meeting.
The visibility of the street signs will grant residents an opportunity to ask questions and gain understanding, Woodards said: “I think it’s so beautiful.”
She continued: “We look forward to working with the Tribe to find other ways to acknowledge and to educate folks in our community about their homelands, and lifting their story up so that we can all learn it.”
