OREGON CITY — The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde announced in September it had chosen “Tumwata Village” as the name for its 23-acre site near Willamette Falls in Oregon City, and has launched tumwatavillage.org to explain plans for expanded public access to this part of ancestral homelands.

The website will be updated as decisions are made on the environmental and cultural restoration of the site, and its development to visually and physically connect people to the landscape.

“No definitive plans have been made, but the intent is for people to come, witness and be part of this beautiful, powerful force of nature,” said Cheryle A. Kennedy, chairwoman of the Grand Ronde Tribe.

The new name honors the Clowewalla band of Tumwaters, who, with the Clackamas Chinooks, were forcibly relocated from the Willamette Falls area to the Grand Ronde Reservation in 1855, Kennedy said.

“The new name is not just about honoring our ancestors who called Tumwata home but also about honoring what that place was, what that place is today and honoring the place itself,” she said.

The 23-acre Tumwata Village is one part of a complex and historic change-of-hands of Willamette Falls as local Indigenous communities regain a year-round presence at the waterfall that had been withheld from them for generations.

While only the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde currently owns land at Willamette Falls, the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, and the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation also cite ancestral connections to the falls.

Descendants have already begun redeveloping some of the land that surrounds the falls, tearing down the old Blue Heron paper mill buildings and reimagining ways to restore and rehabilitate the riverfront.

The Grand Ronde tribe pulled out of the Willamette Falls Legacy Project, a multi-government and intertribal partnership, in March, and is working independently on Tumwata Village.

“Tumwata Village is a meaningful name for a meaningful site,” Kennedy said in a news release.