Yakama Women at the Longhouse

As this issue continues, we highlight “Yakama Women at the Longhouse: Huli-Carried Medicine and Traditional First Food Ceremonies, Part 1,” by Hailey Allen (Yakama). This article centers Yakama women as vital carriers of traditional medicine, ceremonial knowledge, and cultural continuity within the Longhouse (Waashat) way of life. Through participatory, land-based research—including elder interviews, First Foods ceremonies, ceremonial runs, and harvesting practices—Allen situates medicine as relational, embodied, and inseparable from land, community, and spirit.

Anchored in the metaphor of Huli—the Sahaptin word for wind—the article illustrates how knowledge moves cyclically across generations through women’s leadership, matriarchal wisdom, and ecological stewardship. By framing research itself as ceremony and resistance, Allen foregrounds Indigenous women’s roles in sustaining resilience, honoring First Foods, and reaffirming sacred relationships to land amid ongoing colonial pressures.

Hear from Hailey Allen directly on her contribution to the journal:

Yakama Women at the Longhouse: Huli-Carried Medicine and Traditional First Food Ceremonies

Part 1

Abstract 

In this article, Hailey Allen (Yakama) explores the role of traditional medicine among Yakama women as a vital expression of Indigenous knowledge and a fundamental aspect of Longhouse (Washat) cultural continuity. Referred to as the Seven Drums Religion, or Waashat and Washani, the Longhouse Religion of the Columbia Plateau, including the Yakama, is better understood as a spiritual way of life rather than a formal religion. This study employs an immersive, participatory framework, utilizing elder interviews, Longhouse ceremonies, ceremonial runs, and community knowledge, alongside the harvesting of sacred First Foods: salmon, roots, berries, deer, and water. These elements are central to Longhouse practice. Anchored in the metaphor of Huli, the Sahaptin term for wind, Allen illustrates how Yakama women embody the cyclical and relational transmission of knowledge, thereby fostering cultural continuity and ecological stewardship through generations.

About the author 

Hailey Allen (Thx̱) is Yakama and Umatilla and recently earned a BS in Public Health, with minors in Political Science and American Indian Studies. A former CWIS summer intern, she now joins the organization as the Kiaux Russell Jim Public Health Research Fellow, where her work focuses on women’s traditional medicine. Allen’s path was shaped by her great-uncle, the late Yakama elder Russell Jim—a longhouse leader and environmental protector—whose commitment to community deeply influenced her approach to research and public health. Grounded in an Indigenous feminist lens, her scholarship centers on women’s roles within the Yakama Longhouse. In Women at the Longhouse: Part One, she explores how medicine, ceremony, and First Food teachings sustain cultural knowledge across generations. Allen is also a mother of two, a distance runner, co-founder of Huli Boardshop in Ferndale, Washington, and a professional visual artist on the ArtsWA Public Artist Roster, creating bold, layered, abstract portraiture that centers Indigenous women.

Read the article and access the complete Special Edition issue.