TULALIP – Henry Gobin stood on the bluff above Tulalip Bay in a misty rain, surveying the beaches around the bay and on Whidbey Island in the distance.

“This whole area is a repository of history,” he said. “People need to understand who we are and what is our sense of relationship to the land.”

More than 2,000 years ago, the Tulalip Tribes’ ancestors occupied a broad area extending from Camano Island to Edmonds, said Gobin, the tribes’ cultural resources manager. They had numerous encampments, including at Camano City, Warm Beach and a longhouse at Preston Park at the mouth of the Snohomish River, which enabled the tribes to protect sites along the river.

Jennifer Buchanan / The Herald Henry Gobin, a Tulalip Tribes cultural resources specialist, stands beside Tulalip Bay with Camano Island in the background.

While the tribes have lost control of much of that land over the centuries, their ancestors are buried in numerous locations. The tribes regard those burial grounds as sacred.

Among them is Cama Beach, about a mile north of Camano Island State Park on the island’s western shore.

The state Parks and Recreation Commission plans to open a park there next year, but the project has been halted since March, after crews excavating utility trenches to provide power for rental cabins unearthed the remains of four people in January and February.

The Tulalips monitored the excavation because they knew the site had been a tribal encampment.

Now the tribes have asked the state to permanently halt the park project, and pledged to do whatever is necessary to preserve the site, including purchasing it.

“Our people always have had a great respect for our dead,” Gobin said. “To build a resort on the remains of our ancestors is disrespectful. … We take issue with people wanting to make it a tourist site. That, to us, is very painful.”

As a comparison, he said people would be upset if it was decided to build a resort at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

“That’s the same principle,” Gobin said.

State officials say they also are committed to protecting the site, but they’re not interested in selling the park. State officials are meeting with tribal directors to discuss Cama Beach.

“Our interest is in being good stewards,” said Larry Fairleigh, assistant state parks director in charge of planning, real estate and construction.

Park supporters say there’s room for all of the park’s varied history to be showcased in the educational center planned for Cama Beach State Park. An agreement between the state and tribes gave the Tulalips the option to build a cultural center at the park.

The agreement also allowed for the digging, and about 85 percent of the utility trenches had been completed, Fairleigh said.

The permit that allowed the excavation has expired, but the state is seeking an extension. That application is undergoing a public comment period in which the Tulalips can express their concerns, Fairleigh said.

The Tulalips reburied the remains of the four people.

“It’s time people recognize it’s a significant burial and cultural site of the Tulalip people,” Gobin said.

He acknowledged there are probably many similar sites along area waters. Tribal encampments needed to be accessible, to have water available and to provide a means of protection from the elements, he said.

That’s why Tulalip Bay was chosen as the site for the Tulalip Reservation under the Point Elliott Treaty of 1855 as a home for the Snohomish, Stillaguamish, Samish, Skagit, Snoqualmie and Suiattle tribes.

“Our people had longhouses all the way from Warm Beach down,” Gobin said. “Mission Beach was a burial site in (Capt. George) Vancouver’s time.

“Maintaining the cultural and historic integrity of our land is very important to us,” he said.

The tribe’s cultural resources center on the reservation, whose tribal name means “House of Learning,” and a planned cultural museum nearby are dedicated to “those who have gone home before us and those who remain to keep the fires burning,” Gobin said.

He explained how the tribes’ burial practices were transformed over the centuries.

When the land was pristine forests extending to the water, the common practice was to wrap bodies in woven cedar blankets suspended between two cedar trees. Bodies also were wrapped in cedar blankets, tule or cattail mats and placed in canoes mounted on four posts. Later, Catholic priests brought the concept of underground burial.

The Cama Beach site has multiple burial locations. Gobin said it could be even bigger than a Port Angeles site where hundreds of ancient tribal remains were unearthed. The state has halted a construction project there and is seeking another location.

The Cama Beach site “is not an insignificant site,” Gobin said. “It’s a true and historic legacy of the Tulalip people. To minimize that is a tragedy.”