SUQUAMISH — The year Ed Carriere was born, the potlatch was still illegal in the United States and Canada. Speaking the language was frowned upon. If you were Native American here, you could look forward to a career as a subsistence fisherman, but not much else.

And now, on the beach below the House of Awakened Culture longhouse, the octogenarian Suquamish master carver and weaver watched as young people sang and welcomed canoes from other indigenous nations. He watched as young ones stood and, some speaking in the languages spoken by their great-grandparents, asked for permission to come ashore after a long journey at sea.

“After my experiences of that discrimination — the Tribe not having any programs or any help back in the ’30s and ’40s and ’50s, even into the ’60s — when I see all this today, it just makes me feel real good that our young people have the opportunity to do these things,” Carriere said.

“They can to go to any school they want to. Their lives will be enriched, where my life was a struggle. It makes me feel real good to see all this today.”

Suquamish was the next-to-the-last stop in the 2015 Canoe Journey, Aug. 4-5. The final destination: Golden Gardens Park in Seattle, to be hosted by the Muckleshoot Tribe through the weekend. (The landings took place at Golden Gardens, with canoe families being shuttled to the Muckleshoot reservation for the festivities.)

It’s been 26 years since the first modern Canoe Journey — the Paddle to Seattle — took place, sparking a cultural renaissance: the revival of canoe travel upon ancestral waters, the restoration of languages and songs and teachings, the bolstering of indigenous pride, the message to the world that Pacific Northwest Native cultures are alive and thriving.

This year’s journey is being called a “Youth Pull,” with younger people being given more responsibility in the canoe and in the longhouse. These young ones were born long after the first Canoe Journey, but their words indicate that they expect to be the ones who carry it on.

“It definitely made me feel good, being with my relatives and friends,” said Katelynn Pratt, 14, who, as Miss Chief Seattle Days, is a youth representative of the Suquamish Tribe. “It just made me feel alive. It felt good, singing and laughing and having fun.”

To her, the Canoe Journey is a metaphor for life. In the canoe, “You forget about your worries. You work on getting to that next place … [You learn] that there’s always something better, that when you get into a rough place, you can get through it.”What has she learned about herself? “I’ve learned I’m strong.”

Kaiden Finkbonner, 12, of the Lummi Nation said he’s gained “courage” from his participation in the Canoe Journey.

“I push myself toward reaching those goals of pulling to our different destinations and trying to make it as far as possible while paddling,” he said. What he’s learned: “As you paddle, you grow stronger and you start to think positively about yourself, because you feel yourself growing stronger.”

This Canoe Journey was Adam Charles’ first as skipper, responsible for leading a crew of 11 safely from Point Julia on Port Gamble S’Klallam’s shores to Suquamish and on to Muckleshoot.

Charles is 15.

“It’s a lot of tough work, but we got through it, even though we hit a lot of rough patches out there,” he said at Suquamish. “I just did what I learned from my training, that if it gets rough, I’ve got to keep going.”

What he learned about himself: “I don’t have that much neck muscle,” he quipped. He said the experience he’s gained has bolstered his self-confidence.

Now includes other indigenous cultures
The Canoe Journey is an annual gathering of Native peoples from the Pacific Northwest. The first stop in this year’s journey was Birch Bay, followed by the Lummi Nation, Samish Nation, Swinomish Tribe, Tulalip Tribes and Suquamish.

The annual journey was sparked by the Paddle to Seattle in 1989, which was organized by educator Emmett Oliver, Quinault, as part of the State of Washington’s centennial celebration. Since that first journey, the journey has grown to include more than 100 canoes and the participation of people from other indigenous canoe cultures, including Ainu, Alaska Natives, Greenlandic Inuit, Maori, Native Hawaiians, and indigenous peoples from Brazil and Mexico.

The annual gathering is rich in meaning and cultural significance. Canoe pullers travel great distances as their ancestors did, so participating in the journey requires physical and spiritual discipline. At each stop, canoe families follow certain protocols — they ask for permission to come ashore, often in their ancestral languages, and at night in longhouses there is the gifting, honoring and sharing of traditional songs and dances. Meals, including evening dinners of traditional foods, are provided by the host nations.

At Port Gamble S’Klallam, the transfer of leadership from one generation to the next was clearly underway. Laura Price, a longtime canoe skipper, said this Canoe Journey held special significance to her because it marked the first time her husband’s young cousin, Adam Charles, would skipper the 11-man canoe.

On the beach before the canoe got underway before 9 a.m. Aug. 4, Price talked about the responsibility that comes with leading a team of canoe pullers — a responsibility that has a spiritual aspect.

“When you enter the canoe, you enter it like you’re entering a church,” Price said. “We respect it. We don’t cuss, we don’t think bad thoughts. I discourage bad jokes even, because it’s like entering something that is very spiritual.

“To be a leader and a skipper, it’s a tough job, because you have to humbly look after everybody and try to share those teachings with others. Not everybody’s going to agree with them, but you have to do your best to make those teachings live in the canoe, because you’re protecting the canoe, which protects the people. You’re responsible for the protection of every person in this canoe. It’s a huge responsibility.”

The route from Point Julia is rich in cultural significance. Charles and his crew departed Point Julia, home of an ancestral village and site of a commissioned totem pole that Charles is carving with his cousin, Jimmy Price. They passed the former mill town of Port Gamble, which Charles’ ancestors knew as Teekalet. They rounded Twin Spits, followed the north shores of the Kitsap Peninsula, and stopped at Point No Point, which the ancestors knew as Hahdskus, and where the leaders in the grandparents’ grandparents’ generation signed the Treaty of Point No Point, making land available to the United States for non-Native settlement. Then they set off for Suquamish, where many of them have relatives.

One of several this year
The 2016 Canoe Journey will be hosted by the Nisqually Tribe. But the 2015 Canoe Journey is one of four this year.

The Ahousaht First Nation presents a Traditional Territorial Canoe Journey annually to, according its website, “bring the youth, parents and elders out to show our territory and where we come from and what each part of the territory means and what it is about, [and] what has been done in each place.” The journey also promotes a healthy, alcohol- and drug-free lifestyle. The first Traditional Territorial Canoe Journey took place in 2009.

The Semiahmoo First Nation hosted its annual Pulling Together Canoe Journey July 2-11. The journey started at the Sts’ailes First Nation (Harrison Lake) and will continue down the Fraser River from to Semiahmoo Bay.

The Sliammon First Nation hosted an Honoring Our Youth Canoe Journey for First Nations on the coasts of Vancouver Island and mainland B.C. Canoe families traveled down the coast of Vancouver Island and across to Powell River, arriving at Willingdon Beach on July 17. Two days of cultural celebrations followed on July 18-19.

A Port Gamble S’Klallam canoe passes the former mill town of Port Gamble, known by the ancestors as Teekalet, enroute to Point No Point and Suquamish, Aug. 4. Photo: Richard Walker / Staff