When George Zantua was growing up in the 1940s, he and other Indians passed themselves off as Filipino to try to shield themselves from discrimination.
Born on the Muckleshoot Reservation outside Auburn to parents with Alaskan Native heritage, he never had a birth certificate. As an adult, he says, “I had to go to court to prove who I was.”
Today Zantua, a Tacoma artist, knows who he is, and he wants to help other Indian people know themselves better.
That’s one reason he joined the governing board of Native Quest, a new cultural center in Tacoma.
Zantua describes it as “a Native cultural center for urban Natives.”
But the center is also a way to share and celebrate cultures with the wider community.
“Everybody can take advantage of it,” Zantua said.
Native Quest opened in October in a building on the edge of downtown, at the intersection of South 25th Street and Jefferson Avenue. The site was previously the home of Commencement Bay Coffee Co.
Seed money from the Nisqually Tribe helped launch the effort, and organizers of the nonprofit center are seeking more grant dollars and volunteer help.
The former coffeehouse is still a work in progress, but volunteers have started transforming the building. The center hosts discussion groups, known as talking circles; Indian flute players; a work space and gallery for artists; storytellers, social mixers for singles; craft classes; and more. (A schedule is posted on the center Website, nativequest.net.)
There’s a cozy café with a menu built around traditional foods such as salmon, buffalo and turkey, as well as Three Sisters Soup that features corn, beans and squash.
Crafts, jewelry and art produced by Indian artists are for sale, along with books from MacRae’s Indian Books, a fixture in downtown Enumclaw for decades.
Kathy MacRae Foy – daughter of bookstore founder Ken MacRae – is now the executive director of Native Quest.
She’s working on one corner of the center that will become a display for art and artifacts. Her vision is of a small, intimate and educational space where visitors will be able to connect with displayed objects.
Foy is helping to kick-start the display space with her personal collection of miniature wood carvings. The carvings are the work of artist Shonah-Hah, an Oklahoma Cherokee who lived in Southwest Washington. She created a series of more than 1,000 carvings before she died in 1997.
Her work is noted for its detail. Each doll-like carving – or Little Person, as Foy calls them – is dressed to represent a real Indian, each from a different tribe. Many of the figures show people at work: a Cheyenne woman making a meat-and-fruit mixture known as a pemmican, a Yakama woman crafting moccasins, a Spokane woman accompanied on an imaginary journey with her dog at her side, pulling her belongings.
“She made all the clothing,” Foy said. “She was as exacting as she could be.”
Foy said Shonah-Hah drew her images either from photographs or from people she knew. Foy has been combing her book collection, trying to match her figures to their sources.
Foy, who has been collecting Shonah-Hah’s work since childhood, has several hundred of the figures. Five are in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.
Foy and others are excited that the head of that museum, Kevin Gover, will be in Tacoma over the Martin Luther King Holiday weekend. In addition to speaking at the University of Washington Tacoma today, he plans to visit several tribal museums in the area, as well as Native Quest on Tuesday. “Whenever I travel, I try to take the opportunity to go to tribal museums and cultural centers to learn how we might assist them – or they might assist us,” Gover said.
TODAY AT UWT
Kevin Gover, director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, is the guest speaker at today’s Martin Luther King Jr. Unity Breakfast at the University of Washington Tacoma.
His topic: “Building Bridges Across Cultures – Using the Past to Guide Our Future.”
Sen. Patty Murray will also speak.
Today’s event features presentation of the Dream Awards, which recognize campus and community members for addressing diversity, social justice and civil rights issues.
When: 8 a.m. -10:30 a.m. today
Where: William W. Philip Hall, UWT campus
Tickets: $15 general admission; $10 UWT students; $5 kids 10 and under; available at the door
Debbie Cafazzo: 253-597-8635
debbie.cafazzo@thenewstribune.com
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