A season of cultural events is in full swing in Kitsap, each a showcase of the enduring beauty and diversity of the region’s history — and a bridge to understanding for observers.
2016 CANOE JOURNEY
Canoes from numerous indigenous nations will visit Kitsap this month as part of the 2016 Canoe Journey/Paddle to Nisqually.
The Canoe Journey is an annual gathering of canoe cultures from throughout the Pacific Northwest. Members of canoe teams, called canoe families, travel the marine highways of their ancestors, visiting various Native Nations en route to the final destination.
Each visit features the sharing of traditional foods, gifts, dance and songs. Canoe skippers ask, often in their native languages, for permission to land and to leave.
Canoes will land at Point Julia, Port Gamble S’Klallam, on July 24 and depart on the 25th. Canoes will land at Suquamish on the 25th, and depart on the 27th.
For those in the canoe, participating in the Journey is a feat of physical fitness and discipline. Canoes travel as much as hundreds of miles to get to the final destination.
For Tribes, hosting is an economic and logistical feat.
“I love hosting,” said Laura Price, who as Port Gamble S’Klallam’s hosting coordinator was very busy July 11 planning to accommodate 2,000 guests in two weeks.
“It’s an opportunity to let our community shine, to share what we have, to let our visitors meet our families and be able to eat our [foods]. It’s a huge amount of work, but it brings honor and pride to our community …
“We are honoring our ancestors when we host. It’s keeping our traditions strong; we never lost our traditions, our customs, and our teachings.”
She added, “I love when our longhouse is full of song and dance. That’s what it was built for — the power [of] our songs, dances and prayers, bringing all the Tribes together to celebrate. When our longhouse is filled to the brim, that’s the highlight for me.”
Approximately 100 canoes will land at the Port of Olympia on July 30. The Nisqually Tribe will host a ceremony commemorating the Medicine Creek Treaty in July 31. Protocol — gifting, dances, songs, and teachings — is scheduled for Aug. 1-6.
The theme of this year’s Journey: teqw?ma? (pronounced approximately like “Tahoma”), which means “Don’t forget the water” and is an indigenous name for Mount Rainier, where the Nisqually River originates.
SIIDASTALLAN 2016
Siiddastallan 2016, a gathering of Sami people in North America, will take place on Aug. 12-14 in Poulsbo.
This is the first Sami gathering here since 1998.
The Sami are the indigenous people of Sapmi, a region of northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Kola Peninsula in Russia.
Numerous Sami people living in Poulsbo are grandchildren and great-grandchildren of people recruited from Sapmi by the U.S. government to teach reindeer husbandry to the Inupiaq people in the 1890s, in order to introduce a source of economic development and meat there. Several Sami remained in Alaska and married into the Inupiaq and Yup’ik cultures.
In their homeland, the Sami were subjected to policies familiar to indigenous peoples of Canada and the United States. Sami were subjected to genetic testing and/or placed on exhibit, Sami children were removed from their homes and sent to residential schools, and Sami songs and languages were outlawed until 1958.
Today, the Sami have a parliament and are actively involved in managing their lands and resources. The Sami Parliament is a signatory to several international agreements, conventions and declarations related to protection of rights for children, women, and Indigenous Peoples around the world.
Lynn Gleason, a Poulsbo resident and president of the Pacific Sami Searvi, said Siiddastallan will begin with a presentation to the Suquamish Tribe, “because we are in the historical territory of the Suquamish people.”
The ensuing gathering will include visitors from Sapmi, recent film works, and a Founders and Elders Forum honoring Faith Fjeld (1935-2014) “and other early founders and elders in the Saami Awakening in North America.”
Fjeld, a journalist of Sami ancestry, is considered the founder of the contemporary North American Sami Movement, and was founding editor of Baiki, the International Sami Journal.
CHIEF SEATTLE DAYS
The following weekend, Aug. 19-21, the Suquamish Tribe hosts Chief Seattle Days, a three-day public festival established in 1911 to honor Chief Si’ahl, or Seattle, leader of the Duwamish and Suquamish people and namesake of the City of Seattle.
Many of the same activities from the 1911 celebration are still featured today, including a traditional salmon bake, canoe races, baseball tournaments, and a memorial service for Chief Seattle at his gravesite in Suquamish. Other events include a coastal jam, youth royalty pageant, and pow wow. A family of Aztec dancers regularly participate in the pow wow.
TALL SHIPS VISIT
The Lady Washington, the official ship of Washington state, and Hawaiian Chieftain will visit Brownsville on Aug. 8-11 and Port Orchard on Aug. 12-17
The ships will be open for tours. For information on charters and special events, go to www.historicalseaport.org or call 800-200-5239.
Launched in 1989 in celebration of Washington state’s centennial, Lady Washington is a wooden replica of one of the first U.S.-flagged vessels to visit the west coast of North America. Built in Hawaii in 1988, Hawaiian Chieftain is a steel-hulled interpretation of a typical 19th century coastal trader.
The first tall ships that visited the Pacific Coast were harbingers of European and American empirical designs. And not all of those visits ended well.
At the invitation of the Quinault Indian Nation, the Lady Washington escorted Native canoes in the 2013 Canoe Journey/Paddle to Quinault to “help make some amends for some past transgressions … [and] convey a message that Tribal and non-Tribal communities choose to look forward to and work together on a collaborative basis toward common objectives,” Quinault Nation President Fawn Sharp said at the time.
