A gathering was held in August 2025 to celebrate the installation of 15 signs on the Eureka waterfront highlighting Wiyot words for local animals, plants, places, and cultural practices! The Speaking Soulatluk waterfront signage can be found at the foot of F St. on the Eureka waterfront.

A partnership between the Wiyot Tribe, the Ink People Center for Arts & Culture, & the City of Eureka is expanding awareness & understanding of Soulatluk, the Wiyot language, through a series of public signs & educational projects in the Eureka Cultural Arts District.

Fifteen signs, now installed along the Wigi (Humboldt Bay) waterfront, highlight Wiyot words for local animals, plants, places, & cultural practices, reflecting the Tribe’s deep, ongoing relationship with the coastal environment. Designed in collaboration with tribal cultural experts & local artists, the project supports ongoing efforts to revitalize the Soulatluk language & honor Wiyot ancestral territory. The community is invited to celebrate the signs & the Soulatluk language on Friday, August 15th at 4pm. The celebration will take place at the foot of F Street, on the Eureka boardwalk, where the signs have been installed.

The “Speaking Soulatluk” project, funded by a National Endowment for the Arts “Our Town” grant & facilitated by the Ink People, celebrates the cultural richness of our region by centering language revitalization efforts in the Eureka area & is in relationship with ongoing initiatives to support Indigenous visibility & education. The signs were designed by local artist Kay Lopez through careful consultation with Wiyot cultural leaders and feature QR codes that link directly to Wiyot language resources, share images of local flora & fauna, depictions of coastal landscapes, & illustrations of Wiyot coastal cultural practices. The QR codes also link to audio recordings & educational resources, inviting residents & visitors to learn pronunciation & context from Wiyot speakers & cultural leaders.

Other components of this project include Soulatluk language signage on Humboldt Transit Authority buses & a Soulatluk listening station, beautified by a mural painted by local artist David Mata, which will soon be located in the Da Gou Rou Louwi’ Cultural Center at 417 Second Street in Old Town, Eureka.

Read more about the Speaking Soulatluk waterfront signs in the North Coast Journal article ‘Signs of Soulatluk Revival’ by Jennifer Fumiko Cahill.

In partnership with the Wiyot Tribe of Humboldt County, and funded through a National Endowment for the Arts “Our Town” grant, The Ink People has created banners displayed on buses of the Humboldt Transit Authority with sayings in Soulatuk, in an effort to raise awareness of a nearly lost language of the Wiyot people. This project will continue to bring more signs and auditory experiences of Soulatluk language to the community.

Through colonization and genocide, most young people in the Wiyot Tribe no longer understood the native language, and much of the older generation no longer spoke it. The last known fluent speaker, Della Prince, passed away in 1962. Today, the Wiyot Tribe is leading extensive language revitalization efforts. This is only one of many projects that are returning the Soulatluk language to the ears and eyes of inhabitants of the land where the language originated.

The Ink People respects and honors the individuals through whom Soulatluk language was preserved and transmitted. The translations of the phrases chosen for this project were given by Wiyot Tribal member Marnie Atkins and Lynnika Butler, a linguist and Wiyot Tribe staff member with expertise in the Soulatluk language. Historical speaker credits are noted whenever possible.