Bringing the First Story Back to the Forest

At Tryon Creek State Natural Area, Gabe Sheoships and the team at Friends of Tryon Creek are reshaping how people experience a state park and forest, by honoring Indigenous knowledge, welcoming all Oregonians and reconnecting a community to the land.

We're about to walk beside a creek and into a forest where someone is telling a fuller story of Oregon.

We’ll begin at the headwaters of Tryon Creek near the storefronts of Portland’s Multnomah Village and the traffic-laden I-5 corridor. We’ll continue through the modern, noisy cities of Portland and Lake Oswego that grew around the steep slopes of the creek, see the pipes and culverts that divert it, the stormwater that drains into it and the homes and roads that encroach upon it.

And we’ll arrive in a hushed forest where bigleaf maple, Douglas Fir and western red cedar tower over sword ferns, Oregon grape and red huckleberries. Here, Tryon Creek seeps and burbles over basalts that were laid down deep by lava flows 7 million years ago, then buried by wind-blown sand and silt and topped by soils and rocks carried by the Missoula floods.

This is the Tryon Creek State Natural Area. From here, the creek travels the rest of its seven miles, ending at its confluence with the Willamette River. It’s a little creek, and it’s part of something much, much bigger.

A Deep History Flows Beneath the Surface

The First Peoples have lived on and traveled through this land with the seasons since a time beyond memory, gathering and harvesting berries, camas and wapato, hunting wild game, and fishing for steelhead, salmon and lamprey.

Gabe Sheoships, Executive Director of Friends of Tryon Creek

So, you can imagine the surprise of one of their descendants — Gabe Sheoships, Cayuse, Walla Walla and a Citizen of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation — when he joined the nonprofit Friends of Tryon Creek as its Education Director and saw a timeline and interpretive exhibits that began in 1850.

That's when a man from Vermont, Dr. Socrates Hotchkiss Tryon, took out a donation land claim of 645 acres of canyon bisected by a creek and forested with virgin cedar and Douglas Fir. Tryon cut down a lot of those trees, built a house, sawmill and farm — and died five years later.

His name stuck around. The rest of the story didn’t.

Restoring What Was Missing

Sheoships — a fisheries biologist who is now Executive Director of Friends of Tryon Creek — has spent the last nine years trying to change that. The organization’s influence now stretches beyond the park’s boundaries and into how our region’s educators, environmentalists, philanthropists and policymakers think about ecology and land stewardship.

“One of the biggest misconceptions is that tribes are in the past, that they’re not around anymore, that they don’t carry their traditions or histories,” Sheoships says. “We meet kids that aren’t aware that there are any tribal members left, or they think that fishing for salmon and lamprey happened hundreds of years ago, when really, that happened yesterday.”

The preservation of Tryon Creek began in the late 1960s when a group of about 300 women raised money door-to-door and partnered with the state to create a state park. The group became Friends of Tryon Creek, and they acquired land over 17 years through donations and purchases. The park’s neighbors helped save it from development, and neighbors still volunteer.

However, as is the case with other public lands, the park became exclusive, mostly visited by wealthy people who lived nearby. The board promoted Sheoships in 2020 to make it a park that welcomed everyone to the peace of the forest, and that began by welcoming back its first inhabitants.

Leading with Belonging

Sheoships took an inter-tribal approach, reaching all nine of Oregon’s federally recognized tribes and tribal governments. He recruited to the board Indigenous people, other people of color and younger members, and worked with the board on a new strategic plan. Creating an inclusive community would be at the core of that plan and so would telling authentic stories of people, place and landscape as a stated goal.

Under Sheoships’ leadership, Friends of Tryon Creek has woven Indigenous Knowledge and Traditional Ecological Knowledge throughout the park’s education programs, offering insight into the connections between people, plants, animals and water.

The approach now reaches thousands of students each year through field trips, cultural ecology trainings for educators, and annual events such as Indigenous Culture Day and a Tribal Water Summit.

“Tryon Creek is a gateway to the entire state,” Sheoships says. “When someone comes to visit us, we’re hoping that they’ll take this knowledge and these values wherever they go in life.”

Through programs like Native Family Nights, Indigenous Community Day, and partnerships with community organizations — including groups serving immigrants, LGBTQ+ hikers and families with limited transportation — Friends of Tryon Creek is reducing barriers and redefining what belonging in nature looks like.

“There are some cultural underpinnings in the way Gabe leads,” says Direlle Calica, Director of the Institute for Tribal Government at Portland State University’s Mark O. Hatfield School of Government.

Calica, who is Filipina and a Citizen of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, co-taught a Tribal Relations certificate program with Sheoships for several years.

“In our plateau culture, there is a style of leadership that is very statesmanlike — well spoken, thoughtful and seeking multiple perspectives,” she said. “I appreciate the way Gabe is always seeking advice from folks. He came in with a sense of integrity, grace and diplomacy. As a tribal person, we have a responsibility to be a steward of and speak for those natural resources, and Gabe does that.”

A Living Land Acknowledgement

Visit Tryon Creek today and one of the first things you’ll see is a $2.6 million education pavilion built in the style of a traditional Northwest tribal plankhouse. Made with Western red cedar, the building’s bluestone hallway represents Columbia River basalt.

Tryon Creek Education Pavilion

Sheoships has called the pavilion a “living land acknowledgement.” To commemorate Tryon Creek as a place of connection among tribal people, the building will permanently display original carved artworks by renowned local Indigenous artists: Shirod Younker (Coquille Indian Tribe), Gregory Archuleta (Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde) and Greg Robinson (Chinook Indian Nation). Artist Earl Davis (Shoalwater Bay Indian Tribe) will create metal recognition pieces.

The pavilion will serve youth and families from across the Metro area through year-round day camps, field trips and adult programs, as well as Oregon State Parks programs. Funding came from OCF and its donors, the Hollis Foundation, the Gray Family Foundation, the State of Oregon, Metro, Craft3, Meyer Memorial Trust, M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, the Marcia H. Randall Foundation, and hundreds of private citizens. Building it brought a lot of people together — as Sheoships tends to do.

OCF supported the project because it exemplifies how partnership, place and cultural understanding can lead to stronger, more equitable communities.

“Right now, it feels like there’s so much pulling apart,” says Carlos Garcia, OCF’s Senior Program Officer for the Environment. “You win; I lose. I win; you lose. It’s a zero-sum game. I think Gabe has done this in a way that has managed to expand who the park serves while still keeping everybody in the tent. OCF is a bridge, and Gabe has been a bridge in many ways, not just at Tryon, but other places, too.”  

Tom Gaskill, Executive Director of Greater Oregon City Watershed Council, says when he met Sheoships, they introduced themselves by talking about how they live in the same watershed, a commonality they return to. Sheoships inspires him, he says.

“Just by being who he is, he’s helping us to form as a community in this watershed,” Gaskill says, adding that he’s “in awe” of the educational pavilion and what it represents.

It’s one building — and it’s part of something much, much bigger.

What You Can Do

Give to the Oregon Lands and People Project, which is supporting land trusts as bridge-building organizations poised to accelerate conservation in rural and urban communities — helping people, fish and wildlife and the landscapes they share meet today’s challenges and those to come. Also read In a Divided Time, Oregon’s Land Trusts Conserve Common Ground.

See the new education pavilion and learn more about Friends of Tryon Creek.

Support OCF’s Healthy Environment Fund.

If you have a Donor Advised Fund, please contact your Donor Relations Officer. If you’re new to OCF, our Philanthropic Advisors can help you make the most of your giving.