POINT JULIA — History will come full circle today at Point Julia, when a pole carved by S’Klallam artist Jimmy Price is raised at Jake Jones Park overlooking the point.

The pole will be visible from Teekalet, which became Port Gamble, where S’Klallam ancestors lived until the mill and town were built and the people moved across the bay to Point Julia.

The pole will overlook the point, where Price’s great-great-grandfather, Richard Purser, carved canoes that carried the people on the water here and elsewhere in the Salish Sea, carried them on the marine highways to harvest resources and visit relatives.

The U.S. government destroyed the village at Point Julia in 1939, and the people moved upland to Little Boston and to Coontown, so named because of the large raccoon population there. But Point Julia remains part of the continuum of S’Klallam culture, a holder of memories, a center of community and family life, a connection to the bay where the people have fished and clammed forever.

Price’s pole depicts all of that: an octopus holding a crab, representing sea life; a killer whale, a symbol of the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe; and a watchman, a human figure watching for the safe return of those harvesting in the bay and on the sea.

“It really takes you back. That’s how it was a long time ago,” said Sue Hanna, a great-granddaughter of Purser and a cousin of Price. “There was always someone watching, always someone keeping an eye out for the fishermen, so to me that’s why [the pole] is so important. When [the watchman] would see the canoes and the boats come in, there would be a big celebration. I’m so glad there’s going to be that [again], someone watching over the fishermen who have left to put their lives on the line to bring food to the people.”

S’Klallam Days, an annual celebration, begins today with the pole raising and continues with a weekend of events, including pageant Friday evening and the inaugural Aaron Purser Baseball Game on Saturday.

Regarding the watchman pole, some context: The pole was carved from an 800-year-old western red cedar log. People indigenous to this place had been living off the gifts of the sea for at least two centuries here when this cedar was a sapling, according to shell midden dating by the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe’s archeologist. The cedar was alive during centuries of births and passings, centuries of ceremonies and celebrations, centuries of gatherings and harvests.

It was alive during the time of change, when men from Maine built a mill across the bay and persuaded the First People to move to this marshy place that became known as Point Julia.

It was alive when the people of Teekalet greeted family members who arrived here to visit by canoe, their songs arriving first, carried over the water. In 2012, as he watched canoes arrive at Point Julia during the Canoe Journey, Joe Waterhouse remembered visiting here in the 1930s with his relative, Lach-ka-nim, son of Klallam leader Chetzemoka. Waterhouse and Lach-ka-nim traveled by canoe from Tsetsibus, which means “Where the sun rises” — you know the place as Port Hadlock.

The cedar was alive when the U.S. government burned down the place where families had lived for 80 years, and bought 1,234 acres for a reservation.

Now, the cedar will stand at this place, a 15-foot blessing to those who leave the bay to harvest at sea and a testimony to all who see it that, despite a century and a half of change, “Our culture is still alive,” Price said.

Price’s brother, Joe, is youth services specialist for the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe. He said he hopes young people who see the watchman pole “get inspired to start carving and singing and continue bringing it back. I hope to see [all aspects of the culture] reenergized and revitalized.”

The artist has been carving for more than 10 years, and divides his day between driving bus for Head Start; raising a son, Manny; and creating art. His goal is to become an artist full-time. He apprenticed under his wife’s uncle, S’Klallam master carver Joe Ives, and received additional instruction from David Boxley, the noted Tsimshian artist and culture-bearer.

He’s carved paddles, masks and rattles; and painted Northwest Coast designs on skateboard decks. His prints and shirts are in multiple runs. He carved the panels outside the elder center and the gym, and the signs for the S’Klallam skatepark and Jake Jones Park on the bluff above Point Julia. He was selected, with Jamestown S’Klallam storyteller Elaine Grinnell, to present at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival in 2012.

He likes to experiment with color and media — he wants to produce Northwest Coast Native art in metal, using tools left by his father, a Navajo silversmith who passed away in October 2013. He thinks a lot about his father when he’s working. His father was a retired shipyard worker and a Marine Corps veteran whose own father was a Navajo code talker during World War II.

Price said his father was always ready with a helping hand or constructive criticism while he worked. “My dad was my biggest supporter. He was kind of like a security blanket,” Price said in an earlier interview. His father’s love and wisdom, and his own love for his culture and his family, carry him as he gets into “the zone” — that moment in his work when he blocks everything out and “it’s all Native energy, just focus and work,” he said.

In an earlier interview, he said humbly about the watchman pole project, “I want to thank the Tribe for giving me the opportunity to do this.”