a rare move by a corporation that aught to be praised as about time and clearly good;

A Native American tribe in Washington state got a present when a lumber company returned more than 1,000 acres of their ancestral land.

Port Blakely Companies, a 157-year-old company based in the US and New Zealand, returned two miles of waterfront land and 125 acres of tidelands near the southern Puget Sound to the Squaxin Island Tribe, which has lived along the Salish Sea for centuries, the company said in a Dec. 14 release. 

The gesture is part of a larger “landback” campaign that aims to return indigenous lands to their original owners.

The deal between Port Blakely and the Squaxin people also includes an agreement for the tribe to buy approximately 875 acres of upland working forest from the company for an undisclosed price.

The lumber company acquired the property after a treaty was signed in 1854.

The land return restores the tribe’s direct access to the Puget Sound and to some of the richest shellfish beds in the region, the main reason tribal ancestors based themselves in the area for millennia.

The Squaxin Island Tribe is also known as “The People of the Water” because of their strong cultural connections to the Sound.........read more.........