Trio of canoes Skeet Jensen didn’t let a dumping of snow stop him from bringing three canoes into Tacoma Art Museum.
Jensen was the man responsible for organizing the three canoes now proudly greeting visitors to the museum’s airy lobby, one each for the Cowlitz, Muckleshoot and Puyallup tribes.
Although getting them there meant two trips, a week’s delay and a lot of towels to mop up the snow, the result is a triply impressive display to go along with the paddle-out ceremony for the museum’s Northwest Native Community Celebration on Sunday, an event that’s been growing steadily during its three-year history.
“The first year, they got around 300 (to the festival); last year around 900,” said Jensen, who’ll be near the canoes all day Sunday to share their stories with visitors. “We’re hoping for even more this year. I can only speak for myself, but our intent is to get it out there where people can ask questions (about our culture), to ask ‘Why do you do this?’”
The canoes are just part of the story. All day during the festival (one of several throughout the year in which the museum offers free admission), local Native performers will dance, drum, tell stories and participate in a flute circle. About a dozen vendors will sell and explain their crafts, including carvers, weavers, painters and silverworkers from around the Northwest. Visitors will get the chance to make their own miniature canoe paddle or stone choker. And at 4 p.m., Jensen and other canoe families and elders will release the canoes in a paddle-out ceremony.
It’ll be the end of quite a journey for all three canoes. Seal Spirit, a strip canoe acquired by the Muckleshoot tribe from a First Nations people in British Columbia 12 years ago, and Thunderspirit, a dugout belonging to the Puyallups, were both brought into the museum on the Sunday that saw Tacoma’s first dusting of winter snow. The trailers made it into town, though Jensen said they needed plenty of towels to mop up once the canoes had been carried inside before saying awakening and protection blessings. Strong-lined, black outside and red inside, with angular seal-like prows, the canoes face out of the museum’s front doors like welcoming, 20-foot-long sentries.
Eagledancer, from the Cowlitz, didn’t make it that day.
“The weather turned on us,” said Jensen. The red cedar dugout canoe stayed snowed-in in the Cowlitz community building in Toledo until Jensen finally installed it Wednesday.
Sunday’s festival will culminate with the paddle-out ceremony in which drummers and dancers give the three canoes blessing to leave.
“When we travel to someone else’s house, we bring gifts, ask to share their food and warmth,” Jensen explained. “When we leave, we ask permission. We have to leave in a ceremonial way. It’s very deeply spiritual. The canoes are a live gift from the Creator: The trees were alive, and the canoes will live as long as someone has a paddle.”
While the now-annual celebration has been a boon for the museum by drawing new visitors, the tribes see it as an important way to share their culture, both with those outside the tribe and their own youth.
“I’ve had people telling me there weren’t any Native people around here,” said Linda Levier, a Cowlitz stone weaver and storyteller who’s been a vendor at the festival since the beginning. “I’m like, ‘Hello, here I am.’ And most Natives don’t know their history: who they are, what they do. This is an education. All I want to do is show people my world. It gives people balance.”
Connie McCloud, cultural and youth director, elder and canoe captain of the Puyallup tribe, agrees. “It’s a way to promote our culture, to be visible in the community,” she said. Thunderspirit itself was a way to engage young people, and reduce gang and drug activity, McCloud said; the canoe has traveled hundreds of miles since it was carved for the tribe in 1998, and will host a 120-strong canoe journey to Squaxin Island this July.
“The canoe has been a part of bringing back our language, our songs, our regalia, our dancing,” McCloud said. “The Tacoma Art Museum festival is a way to show what we’ve done.”
Rosemary Ponnekanti: 253-597-8568 rosemary.ponnekanti@thenewstribune.com blog.thenewstribune.com/arts
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