Wanapum

Background

Wanapum means River People, and the Heritage Center's own history page says the Wanapum live on the Columbia River and have done since time immemorial, holding that they were put there to protect and preserve the land and the river for themselves, their children, and those not yet born. The Heritage Center stands next to the Wanapum's ancestral village and Priest Rapids Dam and covers 50,000 square feet, built and run with the Grant PUD over more than sixty years. The Interface Office says it stays current on cultural resource management practice, environmental policy standards, and state and regional environmental regulatory requirements, and works with other Northwest tribes on cultural issues for the Columbia River area; a caption on that page records a memorandum of understanding signed in April 2015 securing continued and future access to the Columbia River corridor on the Hanford Site. Manhattan Project Landmarks, the National Park Service unit at Hanford, records that the Wanapum Band did not sign a treaty, that the Wanapum lived on the site year-round, and that the Wanapum people who still live near Hanford at Priest Rapids are a federally unrecognized tribe with strong cultural ties to the site.

Visit and learn

Wanapum's own site

Tribal lands have their own laws. Check the nation's site before you visit.

Programs

• Living Culture Program

  The Heritage Center's Living Culture Program teaches traditional tool making, including flint knapping for arrowheads and projectile points and the making of fish traps, along with weaving and decorative beadwork. The stated aim is to preserve the way of life, language and traditional physical culture for the next generation.

  https://wanapum.org/about/living-culture-programs/·culture

Sources

• https://www.nps.gov/mapr/learn/historyculture/tribal-nations.htm
• https://wanapum.org/about/
• https://wanapum.org/about/interface-office/

Checked September 2026.

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