The area around what is now the Lake Chelan National Recreation Area was occupied, as the name suggests, by the Chelan people. The Chelan tribe has left some special markings on the cliffs around Lake Chelan known as pictographs. These drawings made with red ocher, a natural form of iron oxide used as a pigment, are a continuing link with the past. A replicated panel of one of the Lake Chelan pictographs can be seen in the North Cascades Visitor Center at Newhalem. The exhibits there display some examples of stone tools and a piece of ocher used by native people of the North Cascades.
Native people are very much a part of the Skagit area community.
The Chelan tribe is part of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation. The native people today continue to have a strong tie to their cultural traditions. It is by preserving these traditions and stories that the people continue to survive. Some tribal members still pursue careers in the traditional hunting, gathering, and fishing occupations. Others are artists, lawyers, scientists, clergymen, etc.