Crowds filled beaches near Seattle last weekend, as tribal members stood drumming and chanting to mark the arrival of dozens of canoe families coming in to shore.
One by one, the skipper of each of the crews introduced themselves and offered a formal request for permission to come ashore.
Only after a representative of the hosting tribe acknowledged them did the paddlers set foot on land.
This year, Alki Beach was their final destination. Some tribal members paddled hundreds of miles to attend. Yet the trip by water, the canoe journey, is only the beginning of the celebration.
After arriving, the paddlers headed by car or van to the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe's reservation for a full week of camping out and sharing food, dances, stories and song. The round-the-clock celebration honors all the tribal cultures that come together each year for the Canoe Journey.
Canoes are at the heart of Indigenous cultures in the Pacific Northwest - they were used for transportation, fishing and hunting. And today, many say they feel connected to their ancestors through paddling and prayer.
That’s a large part of what this intertribal canoe journey is about. It’s also about sharing cultural offerings with other tribes – through formal presentations, referred to as "protocol."
Throughout the week, canoe families took the stage of the Muckleshoot Community Center in two-hour shifts. The schedule extended into the night, around the clock and continued for a week. By tradition, the first group to present is the one that traveled the farthest.
This year, that was the One People Canoe Society from Juneau, Alaska. They took a ferry to Skagway and drove through Canada to get to Bellingham, where they put their canoe in the water at the Lummi reservation, said Yarrow Vaara, who is Tlingit and one of their skippers.
“We still have camping gear that's soaking wet from our last stop, we still have sand in our shoes,” she said. “And then we're pulling out our dance gear that we've been keeping very sacredly safe and dry and clean.”
Despite that, she said everyone was excited to be at this event. After a three-year hiatus due to the pandemic, they’re “hungry for culture.”
“We've been isolated and separated and segregated in different ways, you know, from COVID, from generations of trauma and different things,” she said. “And going through COVID kind of re-ignited some of those feelings.”
Sharing is good medicine
Time spent on the water, “pulling” for long hours with your crew and often singing to stay in sync, is central to the canoe journey. Those images are the ones that tend to get the most air time. But the week of protocol afterward is equally important, said Muckleshoot Chairman Jaison Elkins. The presentations of songs, dances, cultural gifts and testimonials is available to anyone who shows up to witness it.
“And we believe that is good medicine for everybody. Because we need those teachings. We need those songs. We need the dance, and it's good medicine. It's good healing, for all of our people,” Elkins said.
He said the tribe spent two years preparing for the gathering. They set up water, camping space, restrooms and shower facilities. Elkins said over a hundred cooks were helping prepare food, including regional seafood such as salmon, crab and shrimp.
"We want to make sure they're comfortable and they're fed well while they share their songs and dances with us," he said.
“Just so everybody knows, it was against the law for us to practice our culture, not even seven generations ago,” said Freddie Lane, a Lummi community activist and former councilmember who spent hours inside the Muckleshoot Community Center during this year’s protocols, filming and livestreaming them on his Facebook page.
“It was banned by the United States and Canada,” he said of the traditional potlach that canoe journey protocols resemble. At the same time, those societies tried to erase the Indigenous cultures of the lands they settled, taking native children away from their families and sending them to boarding schools that forced them to assimilate.
He calls the week-long celebration he has helped document “the great gathering” that brings everyone together.
“Because we're still here. You know, we survived the great flood. We survived smallpox and the boarding school,” Lane said. “But we're still here and all of us can come together in a good way. And we need more of this in our communities.”
“It’s a resurgence,” said Suquamish chairman Leonard Forsman, who is also president of the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians. Forsman was involved in the original Paddle to Seattle canoe journey in 1989, launched to coincide with the Washington state centennial.
He noted that before colonization by Europeans, when the culture had no written language, protocol was a key time to get stories and information from other places. Today, the annual tradition has helped revive languages and keep them alive. It has also motivated more people to learn how to make Indigenous regalia such as cedar hats and necklaces.
“And that brings a lot of pride back to our people, it incorporates and teaches us about our traditions. It's a way for people to be proud of their heritage,” he said. “And it's good for us to have that exciting time. Every year.“
Reconnecting to native culture
Sitting in the bleachers to soak up the presentations was 67-year-old John Stevenson. He’s a member of the Muckleshoot Tribe, but was adopted by a white family and grew up away from these traditions.
"Yeah, I didn't know my culture at all. And my beautiful cousins and all my relations here at Muckleshoot taught me the traditions of what it is to be in the canoe family," Stevenson said.
He said he’s deeply moved by this event – especially all the young people in their regalia, singing, dancing, and carrying their tribal cultures forward
“It’s amazing to see how native people have never gone away, no matter what happens,” he said. “And this is all of us coming together, to be able to celebrate our beautiful way of life.”
