Wasa’tós (Saddle Mountain)

Land Back. Living Humanities. Future Generations.

Wasa’tós—known to many as Saddle Mountain—rises above the Columbia River in central Washington.

For the Wanapum people, this is not a landmark. It is a teacher.

We are launching a Land Back initiative to return this land to Indigenous stewardship and to support a living place of learning rooted in land, responsibility, and care for future generations.

Why This Place

Wasa’tós sits at the convergence of geological, cultural, and historical time.

During the Pleistocene floods, the Columbia River carved Sentinel Gap through the Mountain. Later, the River became home to Wanapum villages, fishing camps, and root-gathering grounds. Children fasted on the smaller hills; elders climbed to Wasa’tós for instruction.

Long before the term existed, this place functioned as an Indigenous humanities institute—where story, law, memory, ethics, and cosmology were taught in direct relationship with land.

What's Happening Today

The Columbia Basin is changing quickly.

Water systems are under stress.

Salmon are struggling.

Treaty rights continue to be tested.

Energy, data, and AI infrastructure are expanding across the region.

These changes are connected.

Wasa’tós offers a place to understand them together.

An Invitation

This work begins with listening.

We invite people to engage with humility, care, and long-term commitment—not as spectators, but as partners willing to learn what right relationship with land can look like.

Wasa’tós: A Place That Teaches

Wasa’tós is more than a mountain.

It is a place where people have come for generations to learn how to live well.

For the Wanapum, the Mountain teaches responsibility.

The River teaches timing and law.

The Basin teaches how everything is connected.

This project begins with the understanding that place itself is a teacher, not a backdrop.

What Land Back Means Here

Land Back at Wasa’tós means returning land to Indigenous stewardship so that culture, ceremony, and care can happen in the right place.

Through phased land acquisition, we are working to restore Wanapum access to ancestral lands that were never ceded by treaty and have been inaccessible for generations.

Land Back here supports:

ceremony and cultural practice
youth learning on ancestral ground
renewal of traditional food and medicine systems
long-term ecological stewardship

Land Back is not only about ownership.

It is about restoring relationship and responsibility.

Governance & Care

Guided by Relationship, Not Access

The land at Wasa’tós is stewarded through Wanapum cultural law and protocol.

Engagement with the site is guided by listening, respect, and accountability—not tourism or extraction. This ensures the land, stories, and teachings are protected while still offering meaningful ways for others to learn respectfully.

Care comes before visibility.

Relationship comes before access.

Thinking in Long Time

Youth are not here to preserve the past.

They are inheriting the future.

They are growing up at the intersection of:

salmon and water systems
treaty rights and governance
energy systems and climate change
rapidly advancing technology

Wasa’tós offers a place where young people can learn to think across long timelines—50, 100, even 1,000 years—grounded in land, culture, and responsibility.