The Port of Bandon has agreed to return a quarter-acre memorial site in Old Town to the Coquille Indian Tribe, transferring ownership of land where a Coquille village stood.
Tribal council members, elders and children joined port commissioners Sunday at the Nasomah Memorial to mark the transfer.
The port has owned the property for decades and has leased it to the tribe under a 99-year agreement. Commissioners voted unanimously in July to give the land to the tribe.
“Transfer of title is what it is,” Port Commission President Reg Pullen said. “It’s a gift, and the tribe has been great partners with us. We’ve endeavored in several ventures together, and I hope that we’ll do more in the future.”
Pullen said he expects the title transfer to close within a month.
Tribal Council Chair Brenda Meade said the presence of several generations at the gathering was deliberate.
“We have elders here to witness, and we have young people here to witness,” Meade said. “It’s really important to see that, because that’s how important it is to be recognized by others.”
'Burials everywhere'
The village belonged to the Nasomah band of the Coquille Indian Tribe, who lived at the mouth of the Coquille River. In 1853, gold was discovered in the beach sands at nearby Whiskey Run Creek, drawing more than 1,000 miners who established the town of Randolph beside the village.
In January 1854, following a dispute at a ferry crossing, about 40 miners formed a vigilante group and attacked the village at dawn, killing about twenty people.
Evidence of the village remains beneath Old Town Bandon. Coquille Chief Justin Futch spent about seven years as a tribal monitor, working alongside archaeologists to identify village sites and burials before construction disturbed them.
“There are burials everywhere in Old Town Bandon,” Futch said.
He has watched sidewalks removed, roads opened and houses demolished, exposing what lies beneath. The first time he encountered human remains, a fragment of a skull, Futch said he was not prepared for it.
“It’s not our goal to stop construction. It’s not our goal to slow down progress,” Futch said. “It’s just our goal to make sure that our ancestors are treated with the respect that we believe they deserve.”
In 1987, city workers uncovered the remains of six people at the site while digging a trench for communication lines.
The port later became an early supporter of the tribe’s effort to regain federal recognition. Archaeological research at the village documented thousands of years of occupation and helped support the tribe’s case in Washington.
Congress restored federal recognition to the Coquille Indian Tribe in 1989, 35 years after the federal government terminated its recognition.
“We had friends here from this entire community — Oregon tribes, many other Indian people, cousins, relatives, people that lived here,” Meade said. “The support we received from this community was incredible. It actually helped us in our fight to be restored.”
Transferring title
The tribe signed a 99-year lease with the port in 2024. Pullen said he wanted to transfer the land outright then, but the commission was divided.
“Some of the commissioners did not want to do that at that time, so I just bided my time and waited,” he said. “When you’re giving land away, public land, I think you should have a unanimous decision.”
Pullen said the property had little practical use for the port because the graves prevented development. But he said there was a bigger reason.
“We felt like we had to amend an injustice that was done a few years ago, and this land belongs to you,” Pullen said. “I’d like to see more land in your hands.”
Futch said traditional Coquille ideas about land differ from the legal concept of ownership, but that the land transfer is necessary for the tribe serve as good stewards of the site.
"In the modern age, the only way for us to treat [the land] the way we'd like to treat it, or to show respect to it, or to do what we'd like on these lands, we have to take legal ownership," he said. “We have a place we can come and mourn, or to say 'hello,' or to meditate, gather with each other. Somewhere we can kind of call home.”
He said the transfer could also lead to greater stewardship of the tribe’s traditional lands and the Coquille River.
“Maybe that’s one step closer for us reclaiming or starting to provide stewardship for more of our traditional lands and our traditional river,” Futch said.
Lucinda DeNovo, widow of former Chief Don Ivy, said the site was important to her husband, who spent years working to protect it.
“I thank you for doing the right thing and recognizing what the right thing was,” DeNovo said.
The port has continued to support tribal initiatives, including the Coquille Tribe’s push to co-manage fish and wildlife with the state and its current salmon restoration project.
Meade said the tribe plans a larger gathering at the site to bring tribal citizens together and explain how the transfer came about.
