Education Archives - Page 39 of 77

Study Evaluates Young Native Adults’ Connection to Tribal Lands

University of Arizona master’s student Aurora Trujillo is a member of the Taos Pueblo nation in New Mexico, a full-time resident of Tucson during the school year, and is working at an internship in Montana this summer.

She is representative of other young adults who do not live on the tribal reservation land of their native nation, and two UA researchers are hoping to find out how people in a similar situation stay connected with their culture.

Jennifer Schultz and Stephanie Rainie are asking 18- to 29-year-olds from Indian Country to share information about their off-reservation lives. They work at the Native Nations Institute at the UA. The institute’s projects aim to study tribal governance and share adaptable models of success among various tribes.

They chose the topic of study after hearing tribal leaders express an interest, Rainie said.

“Trying to engage those citizens and seek their input and have them be viable, active members in the community, even when they’re gone is something that a lot of tribal leaders have been thinking about,” she said.

People in the age range the two hope to hear from are making important decisions, and will shape the future of their native nations, Schultz said.

“The period between the ages of 18 and 29 is really important for identity formation, for making choices about life partners, for making choices about jobs, for choosing where you’re going to live, ultimately,” she said.

More than 50 percent of the country’s native population does not live on reservations, Schultz said.

“Over the past several decades, native nations have made a lot of great strides culturally, economically, and in other respects,” she said. “One of the questions we still don’t know a lot about is the experience of tribal citizens, especially young people, and it continues to be a population of great interest to tribes.”

While the study has a specific focus: young adults’ connection, or lack of, to native lands, the goals are broad and will inform other research, Schultz said.

“This project was developed to serve the needs of native nations by facilitating the exchange of ideas, stories of what’s working and to basically be a general resource for tribes in dealing with this issue,” she said.

Trujillo is a graduate research assistant at the Native Nations Institute. She grew up on and near the Taos Pueblo reservation, and attended Bureau of Indian Affairs schools.

This summer she is working on the Blackfeet reservation in Montana, as part of her education toward a master’s degree in public health. When she’s in Tucson for the academic year, she makes the 600-mile, 10-hour drive to her nation for ceremonies and dances.

She feels a responsibility and an honor in doing so, she said.

“Our traditions are thousands of years old and it makes me feel really good to be part of that. It makes me feel like I am connected to the land you know by blood. I feel connected even though I’m not there. I still know who I am and know where I came from,” Trujillo said.

It’s also her identity.

“It’s who I am, and it feels good to belong to that, so I want to keep it going. I like how strong it is, we’re a very traditional culture. It makes me feel good to be a part of something that’s larger than myself.” she said.

The researchers want to look beyond the state of young adults’ relationships with their tribal nations. Through follow-up interviews, Schultz said she and Raine hope to ask participants for suggestions for changes in tribal communication to improve connectedness with those living away from the reservations.

“On the one hand we hope to come up with stories of what’s working, but also stories of what might work, and utilize the creativity of these young people in the service of their nation,” Schultz said.

Academic work with tribal communities sometime lacks data, Rainie said, so the responses to these questions will inform the Native Nations Institute for a while.

“This is a start, a pilot project,” Rainie said. They are “trying to gather initial data to focus and refocus where we’re going with this project.”

One such suggestion for future projects is to help tribes find a way to improve economic opportunities for young adults, Trujillo said. The nations can be good at encouraging young people to move away for education and opportunity, but the message to come back is not as loud, Trujillo said. She said she thinks a big part of that is lack of opportunity to draw people back to their native lands.

She speaks Tiwa, the language of her Taos Pueblo. Every time she goes home, it’s a challenge to refresh her language skills, she said. The language is not written, only spoken, and she said she would like to help herself and others study it from afar.

“Maybe if we recorded some languages, you know some phrases, and sent the recording to a student or somebody who was living off the reservation and they could keep learning while they were away and then of course practice when they come back home,” she said.

The researchers are also interested in the connections young American Indians make in their non-reservation communities. Trujillo said she has formed valuable connections in Tucson, even though there are not many Pueblo Indians in town.

She said she makes those connections at the Tucson Indian Center.

“They have a walking club every Wednesday and it’s with some elderly ladies,” she said. “Even though they’re not from my tribe, it’s sort of like they fill a bit of an auntie/grandmotherly void.”

That void is notable when she is not at home in New Mexico, she said.

“I grew up surrounded by women and I feel like I need that sometimes and it feels really good to be around them,” Trujillo said.

She wants to continue to be connected to tribal lands, even if they are not the ones she experienced as a girl.

“Of course everybody wants to go back and serve their reservation, but I also feel part of the larger Indian Country community, so I’d hope that I can use my education to serve anybody,” she said.

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Five Students Earn Scholarships from Northwest Indian Bar Association

Richard Walker, Indian Country Today

BAR ASSOCIATION SCHOLARSHIPS: Five Native students attended law school in 2013-14 with support from the Northwest Indian Bar Association.

This year’s scholarship recipients:

Charisse Arce, Native Village of Iliamna, Seattle University School of Law.

Tiffany Justice, Couer d’Alene, University of Idaho.

Rhylee Marchand, Colville, University of Idaho.

Ashley Ray, Muscogee Creek Nation, University of Idaho.

Cara Wallace, Ketchikan Indian Community, University of Arizona.

The NWIBA offers scholarships every year to Native law students in Alaska, Idaho, Oregon and Washington—the deadline is in November—and offers bar-exam stipends in June. For more information, visit the website or contact Lisa Atkinson, Northern Cherokee/Osage, nwibatreasurer@gmail.com.

Tulalip Tutorial Program Summer School Open House, July 17

Haida Master Carver and Students Restoring Ocean-Going Canoe

Richard WalkerSaaduuts Peele, a Haida master carver, instructs Gabriel Port, a Samish Nation descendant, on a finer point of canoe carving on October 23, 2010, at the Center for Wooden Boats in Lake Union, Seattle. Saaduuts is resident carver at the center, and has carved two canoes with the assistance of local students. — Richard Walker
Saaduuts Peele, a Haida master carver, instructs Gabriel Port, a Samish Nation descendant, on a finer point of canoe carving on October 23, 2010, at the Center for Wooden Boats in Lake Union, Seattle. Saaduuts is resident carver at the center, and has carved two canoes with the assistance of local students.

Richard Walker, 7/14/14, Indian Country Today

Haida master carver Saaduuts Peele was a guest at Pinehurst K-8 School in Seattle, Washington on June 18 for the school’s final graduation ceremony—the school will soon be torn down to make way for a new school.

Peele and Pinehurst students carved a 40-foot ocean-going canoe, Ocean Spirit, in 2003-04 and gifted the canoe to the Native community of Hydaburg, Alaska in a potlatch in April 2004. The canoe was returned to Seattle on June 18.

Saaduuts, resident carver at the Center for Wooden Boats in Seattle, is doing some repairs to the canoe at the center. Once repairs are completed, the canoe will return to Hydaburg.

Conference seeks to join Native American carvers and museum professional in preservation of cultural items

By Brandi N. Montreuil, Tulalip News

TULALIP – The conservation and preservation of Native American poles, posts, and canoes will be the focus of the first symposium hosted by the Hibulb Cultural Center and Natural History Preserve on July 21- 22, held at the Tulalip Resort Casino.

Poles, Posts, and Canoes will bring together Native American and non-Native museum professionals, and contemporary carvers to discuss the challenges in preserving and exhibiting wood carvings, while also examining the Native and non-Native viewpoint on preserving these historic wood items.

“When I first came to work here four years ago, one of the things that struck me most was the fact that we have a number of poles and canoes in the collections,” said Hibulb Conservator, Claire Dean. “These large wooden objects are a real challenge for museums everywhere, regardless of their cultural background. It is because these tend to be very big and heavy to move around. Actually they are quite difficult to display safely. If they are old, and deteriorated they become fragile. Here we have a disproportionate number of them, and that has to do with the fact that the community here, the poles and canoes, are a central part of the material culture here, and when you have a culture with that in its background, then you are going to run into them as more of a challenge than other cultures where they don’t exist. I am also very aware that we have carvers here in the community, and I like the idea of trying to involve them somehow.”

Dean explains the idea for the Poles, Posts, and Canoes Symposium developed from a conservator conference Dean attended, which highlighted the preservation of the Maori Waka Taua Project, or war canoe project, at the National Museum of Scotland. During the conference the issue of preserving cultural items such as wood canoes, a responsibility of Dean’s as a conservator at Hibulb, was examined. Dean learned how the war canoe, in derelict condition, was discovered during an examination to be a product of three canoes merged together, instead of one carving, making the preservation of the canoe difficult. With the help of highly-regarded Maori artist George Nuku, the canoe was restored using acrylic material to fashion a new sternpost, blending traditional materials with contemporary elements to safely preserve the canoe for display.

“We were already thinking about our conference and immediately I thought, ‘this is it! This is exactly what I have been thinking about. This idea of incorporating traditional carvers into the care of the collections.’ Not that I am suggesting that we are going to make lots of plexiglas poles, but it is this idea of working with artists who are very much a part of the community,” said Dean.

The two-day conference will feature a non-traditional conference format featuring informal presentations regarding the care of past, present, and future cultural

Photo courtesy/ Hibulb Cultural Center and Natural History Preserve

items.

“I thought it was a great opportunity to have a conference where we could actually sit down and really talk about this, and while this isn’t the first time that a meeting has been held about this topic, it is the first time, that I am aware of, that it has been hosted by a tribal community and held on tribal lands,” said Dean.

“We will have little sessions where presenters will be giving 15 minute talks, so they are very short and to the point,” continued Dean. “I have asked the presenters to prepare their presentations to spark thought and discussion. We will have four or five of these 15-minute talks, then we take a coffee break and for at least an hour and half there is no program. It will be open discussion. It is a chance for the folks attending to ask questions of the presenters and the carvers. This is a bit of a risk, because it is not a conventional way of doing a conference, but I think it is more in keeping with how things are done in communities such as this one.”

Presenters will include George Nuku, Maori artist, Graeme Scott from the Glasgow Museums in Scotland, Richard Feldman from the Eiteligorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, Costantino Nicolizas from the Ecole Des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in France, Kelly McHugh from the National Museum of the American Indian, Tessa Campbell from the Hibulb Cultural Center, and Sven Haakanson from the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, and many others.

Following the two-day conference Hibulb Cultural Center will host a three-day workshop featuring Michael Harrington, Felix Solomon, and Andrew Todd on caring for totem poles held on July 23 – 25, at the Hibulb Cultural Center and Natural History Preserve.

Registration is open until the day of conference, and limited space available for the workshop. Registration fee for the conference is $350 with a discount fee of $250 for students, and the workshop fee is $350. Both events include breakfast and lunch. A special event featuring keynote speakers, Charles Stable and George Nuku, will be held on the evening of July 21, at the Hibulb Cultural Center free of cost and open to the public.

“This isn’t just about the conservation and preservation of old poles, posts, and canoes, which we have here in collections, it is also about the preservation of the tradition of carving these things, and how those two areas of interest intersect. How the collections here can be of help to contemporary carvers, and how the methods and materials in the knowledge of contemporary carvers can actually be of use to conservators.”

For more information on registration for the symposium or the workshop, please visit the Hibulb Cultural Center’s website at www.hibulbculturalcenter.org.

Brandi N. Montreuil: 360-913-5402; bmontreuil@tulalipnews.com

Native Americans struggle to bring teachers to Reservation Schools

By TOM LUTEY, The Billings Gazette

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) _ Desperate for new teachers, Hays/Lodge Pole School District Superintendent Margaret Campbell has pulled out all the stops: A three-bedroom home to live in for $230 a month, with utilities paid; a $1,000 signing bonus; and even a dollar-for-dollar match for up to $300 on monthly student loan payments.

And still, luring teachers to the school district on the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in the shadow of the piney Little Rocky Mountains is extremely difficult. Starting pay is about $26,000 a year.

“A lot of people don’t want to live in a remote area,” said Campbell, who this summer is looking to hire three teachers and a principal. “It’s isolated here.”

Isolated, and challenging. In Montana, teachers are in demand, especially those capable of teaching special education, English and math. A report issued each December on teacher shortages listed 1,169 teaching vacancies, including 463 in critical areas like special education, English, math and science. The shortages are worst on American Indian reservations and rural schools on the outskirts of reservations.

American Indians as a whole represent a relatively small 11.8 percent of Montana’s 142,000 K-12 students, but in 40 Montana school districts American Indians make up at least half the student body. Of those districts, 34 did not meet No Child Left Behind standards.

The 20 most needy schools are all located in these areas. The schools are not only remote, but also lead the state in the percentage of students eligible for federally subsidized free and price-reduced school lunches, as well as low student achievement based on No Child Left Behind results.

The economies on reservations are the worst in the state, with double-digit unemployment rates on all but one reservation. On the Crow Reservation, the rate is 25 percent, according to Montana’s Bureau of Labor and Statistics.

Poverty at home and the social problems that come with it make school that much more difficult.

“I think on reservations there are major challenges in terms of poverty and associated issues,” said Madalyn Quinlan, chief of staff for the Montana Office of Public Instruction. “We talk a lot about the trauma the students bring to schools and it also affects teachers.”

Quinlan authors OPI’s annual report on critical teacher shortages. The report helps steer Montana’s Quality Educator Assistance Program, which provides up to four years of direct student loan payment for teachers who meet critical needs. There was money available for 246 teachers in 2014.

Both state and federal governments have tried to sweeten the pot for teachers willing to work in rural American Indian schools, but superintendents like Campbell say not all hurdles can be overcome with incentives.

“If you’re married, whether it’s your wife, or your husband, they need to work. On reservations there are strict hiring preferences for tribal members, Campbell said. “Your spouse is going to have a hard time getting a job.”

There’s also a professional isolation that can be difficult for teachers with a specialized skill, said Dan McGhee, Pryor Public Schools superintendent. Even in rural schools teachers have peers, but they often don’t have colleagues who specialize in the same subjects who can compare notes.

The student population is also fairly transitory: A significant number of students move in and out of Pryor School during the academic year, which makes teaching difficult. Teachers new to the school have to be ready for that challenge.

“The eight kids you start with in third grade you might wind up with five of the same kids at the end of the year,” McGhee said. The three kids who leave are more often than not replaced by three newcomers. The situation can be incredibly challenging for teachers trying to keep everyone up to speed with the curriculum.

Starting pay for a new teacher is just over $29,000 a year. That’s not a lot of money, McGhee said. Pryor has been offering $2,000 bonuses to non-tenured faculty, but the money came from a state program that is expiring.

McGhee said he would like to offer his teachers more pay, but school funding is pretty tight on reservations, where much of the property is owned by tribal government and tax exempt.

Schools receive Federal Impact Aid money to compensate for tax-exempt property. The money is similar to payments in lieu of taxes given to Montana counties with significant areas of tax-exempt federal land.

But federal budget cuts have reduced the amount of Impact Aid for schools by 10 percent, McGhee said. For school districts on Montana reservations, the cut means six-figure losses in funding and a much more difficult task of hiring teachers.

Ideally, the new teachers in the classroom would be American Indian.

In 2012, Montana State University and Little Big Horn College partnered to help American Indians receive master’s degrees in school administration. The goal is to boost achievement in underperforming schools.

Earlier in June, Sen. John Walsh, D-Mont., introduced a bill to completely forgive student loans for American Indian teachers who were teaching in schools with a percentage of American Indian students.

The bill was proposed to Walsh by tribal leaders concerned about the need for more American Indian teachers. The loans would be forgiven up to $17,500, provided American Indian teachers were in schools with at least 10 Indian students or not less than 25 percent of the total number of individuals enrolled in the school.

Lushootseed Camp begins July 21

Lushootseed teacher, Natosha Gobin, shares traditional stories with youth during the annual language camps.Photo courtesy of Tulalip Lushootseed Language Department — Lushootseed teacher, Natosha Gobin, shares traditional stories with youth during the annual language camps.
Photo courtesy of Tulalip Lushootseed Language Department

By Brandi N. Montreuil, Tulalip News

TULALIP – The Tulalip Lushootseed Language Camp will begin July 21, marking its 19^th consecutive year of connecting Tulalip youth, ages 5-12, to the Lushootseed language and Tulalip culture.

This year youth will learn the traditional Tulalip story, “Seal Hunting Brothers,” told by Martha LaMont. Through the use of activity stations that include art, weaving, technology, traditional teachings, songs, and games among others, youth will learn the traditional story in Lushootseed. Youth will then perform the story in a play for the community at the end of the weeklong camp.

“This story is passed down from Martha LaMont and is one of our vision, mission and values story. Each year we pick our theme and pick our story. We ask ourselves, what story do we want them to learn; what morals do we want them to learn?” said Tulalip Luhootseed teacher Natosha Gobin, who has been teaching at the camp for over a decade.

The story, “The Seal Hunting Brothers,” explores topics about greed, honesty, providing for family and community, as well as explaining how the killer whale became the Tulalip Tribes emblem.

Photo/ Brandi N. Montreuil, Tulalip News

This year, teachers from the Quil Ceda & Tulalip Elementary School will be joining the camp in a collaborative effort to continue building a trust relationship between Marysville School District teachers and Tulalip youth.

“We’ve been doing this for 19 years, and I have been helping to lead the camp since 2003. After this many years, it is hard to hold back on all the ideas that we want to do. This year in our art station we will be teaching about Southern Coast Salish art. Kids will be able to start learning about the art design elements and how to put those elements together, while learning about positive and negative space,” said Gobin.

Held at the Tulalip Kenny Moses Building, the interactive camp is held in two sessions and open to 100 youth. Registration is open until July 28. Both camp sessions will feature a play based on the “The Seal Hunting Brothers,” held at the Hibulb Cultural Center’s Longhouse, followed by a potlatch and a traditional honoring of community members.

For more information about camp times and registration please contact the Tulalip Lushootseed Department at 360-716-4499 or visit their website at www.tulaliplushootseed.com.

Brandi N. Montreuil: 360-913-5402; bmontreuil@tulalipnews.com

Making Natives Copy White Parents Destroys Indigenous Families

Tanya H. Lee, Indian Country Today

Working closely with four American Indian tribes and four Canadian First Nations, Les Whitbeck, professor emeritus at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and his colleagues have developed a model of adolescent development for indigenous youth, based on data collected during an 8-year longitudinal study of 746 tribally-enrolled kids. “Indigenous Adolescent Development: Psychological, Social and Historical Contexts” (Routledge), the first book based on the research, details the findings from the first four years of this landmark study, when the kids were ages 11 to 15.

The study began as part of an effort to create culturally-based prevention programs for adolescents in tribal communities. “It became really apparent,” says Whitbeck, “that majority cultural measures just weren’t going to explain what was going on with these kids. We became more and more aware that what we needed was a whole different developmental model that took into account their historical context, their geographical context, community context, family context and peer context.”

This conclusion is consistent with Whitbeck’s earlier work. For example, he is vehement in his defense of indigenous parenting practices. “I have especially strong feelings about parenting programs. When people go out, well-meaning, good people go out onto reservations with parenting programs that are based on two-parent nuclear families that don’t take into account cultural variations in family structure, particularly extended family influence, clans and that kind of thing, they’re basically doing what the boarding schools did. They’re going out and teaching white parenting and undermining the traditional strengths of indigenous families, which are huge.”

The developmental model the researchers constructed for adolescents, explains Whitbeck, has concentric circles representing each of the developmental contexts for indigenous kids. “Then we have a wedge that goes right down through those circles.” The wedge represents historical cultural losses. “Ethnic cleansing,” he says, “has impacted every single developmental context that these kids are experiencing.”

The model has provided the basis for creating the kind of prevention program Whitbeck was looking for. The program, explains Whitbeck, is intended to delay the onset of substance use among kids. It has been adapted for several tribes—Lakota, Dakota, a couple of pueblos and one Navajo community—but Whitbeck stresses that tribes will need to adapt the model and the prevention program to fit their own kids and communities.

“We’re trying to think in terms of community-wide intervention,” says Whitbeck. One extremely important finding from the research is that negative, stressful life events, on which there has been a lot of focus recently as predictors of poor outcomes for kids, do not necessarily cause permanent damage.

“We saw something that was totally unexpected,” he says. “If you take positive life events—and positive life events were defined by the kid getting community recognition, being recognized by the tribal council, recognized in school, participating in community activities—they blow those negative life events out of the water! So now we’re thinking that maybe there’s a key there. Involving kids early in tribal community activities, recognizing them, honoring them, getting them involved in community things. I think there’s a real opportunity there.”

Community is key to this work in more ways, too. Whitbeck describes the eagerness with which adult study participants (researchers interviewed family and caretakers as well as the kids) embraced communal activities that were part of the research.

And it was the tribal communities themselves that helped develop and oversaw the study. “We started out with the partnership model where they approved first of all us being here. There was great support for the study. The tribal councils appointed advisory boards on each of the reservations and reserves. They literally approved every word of the questionnaire.

“We also developed through the elders, service providers and our advisory boards a concept of major historical loss, which is a different kind of approach to historical trauma. With this concept we use a measure of stress caused by repeated thoughts of historical losses suffered and then see how that impinges on everyday functioning and mental health,” explains Whitbeck.

And much of the research—leading focus groups with elders, parents, relatives and the kids themselves, for example—was carried out by American Indians, among them Melissa Walls, Bois Forte and Couchiching First Nation Ojibwe, an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, who led the focus groups on parenting, which addressed questions such as, “How does the act of taking care of a little one from birth to even through adulthood look unique or similar to what we see in non-Native populations?”

Several scholarly papers have come out of the research. But the book is different. “We write these very technical articles that involve very sophisticated statistical analyses and approaches. Our tribal advisory boards read the articles that we were putting in the book. And they came back to us and they said, ‘You know, Les, can you write in English?’” So the researchers wrote the book for a lay audience so the information would be accessible and useful to service people, tribal leaders and educators.

Then they went out and bought dozens of copies to give to the tribes that participated in the study because the price of the book is so high. “The worst ethical thing you can do is take people’s lives and sell it back to them,” says Whitbeck. He’s hoping to convince the publisher to put out a paperback edition.

More Native Americans join S.D. Teach for America

Nora Hertel, Associated Press July 7, 2014

PIERRE – Kiva Sam hopes to draw more Native Americans to do what she did — return to the reservation and teach.

The 24-year-old begins her new role this month as a recruiter for the nonprofit Teach for America in hopes of diversifying the South Dakota corps of teachers in the program.

The Oglala Sioux member is considered a legacy corps member because a Teach for America instructor at Little Wound School on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation greatly influenced her. Then she signed up after graduating from Dartmouth College.

Teach For America has expanded since it entered the state in 2004. The percentage of native corps members also has gone up. In 2004, the organization had 17 teachers, 5 percent of whom identified themselves as being native. The 2014-2015 crew includes 78 teachers, about 18 percent native.

The organization works in the state to help ease teacher shortages and the achievement gap between white and native students. It initially served the Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations and has expanded to include Standing Rock and Lower Brule.

Teach for America staff said it’s important to have Native American teachers on their team. The organization launched the Native Alliance Initiative in 2010 to help recruit more tribal members as teachers and promote culturally responsive teaching.

“I think having native teachers provides that connection to that community and who (students) are as people,” said Robert Cook, an Oglala Sioux member and the senior managing director of the Native Alliance Initiative.

The organization has been criticized, including by state Sen. Jim Bradford, a Pine Ridge Democrat, who argued against state funding for the organization. He said teachers stay for only two years, and the program charges schools one-eighth of their cost to recruit, train and support teachers.

“They’re not a poor organization,” Bradford said.

In 2012 and 2013, the state provided $250,000 matched, dollar for dollar, by private funds. The state did not provide funding this year, so the organization is targeting private contributions.

Sam said she has heard another critique: “Oh, you’re just another group of white people trying to come in and save the Indians.”

But she would like to see Teach for America build up the teacher base on the reservations to the point where there’s no need for the organization at all.

Cook said that goal might be too lofty, considering tribal schools get fewer than one application, on average, for every open teaching position.

The shortage of teachers across the state and the changes presented by the housing shortages and rural location of reservation schools will leave a place for Teach for America, he said.

Additionally, fewer than a third of students on South Dakota reservations are reading at their grade level, compared with more than three-fourths of white students in the state. And native students here have the lowest graduation rates of any demographic in any state, said Jim Curran, executive director of South Dakota’s Teach for America.

In her new position, Sam will meet with college students and work with Native American groups that could help funnel young people into teacher roles.

“You want to recruit more people from this area” she said. “Because after their two years, you hope they’ll stay in the area.”

Bringing the tree back to life

"Coast Salish Canoes," opened at the Hibulb Cultural Center and Natural History Preserve on June 27, with over 80 guests in attendance. — “Coast Salish Canoes,” opened at the Hibulb Cultural Center and Natural History Preserve on June 27, with over 80 guests in attendance.

New Hibulb exhibit gives an in-depth look at Tulalip’s canoe culture

By Brandi N. Montreuil, Tulalip News

TULALIP- “Imagine you are at the shore of the Salish Sea where a grand ocean-going family canoe floats patiently, waiting for you and others to begin your journey. The rivers, lakes and seas are our earth’s arteries, carrying its life force of water. For thousands of years they functioned as our ancestors’ highways, connecting our people together,” reads the opening display panel in the new interactive temporary Hibulb Cultural Center and Natural History Preserve’s exhibit, “A Journey with our Ancestors: Coast Salish Canoes.”

The new exhibit, on display through June 2015, explores canoe culture in Tulalip and in Coast Salish tribes. A soft opening for the exhibit was held on Friday, June 27, with over 80 guests in attendance. This interactive exhibit features over 70 items that guests can explore canoe culture through, such as videos on carving canoes, maps, display panels, paddles and tools used to carve canoes with, and a large canoe that guests can sit in.

Photo/ Brandi N. Montreuil, Tulalip News

“We hope guests learn the importance of canoes and how they were tied to all aspects of our life,” explains Mary Jane Topash the center’s tour specialist, about what guests can expect from the new exhibit. “We hope to educate people on the types of canoes, anatomy, tools, what it takes to build one, and how they are still used to this day. This exhibit will encompass all aspects of the teachings, history, lifestyle, and how their importance hasn’t changed a whole lot over the years.”

Coast Salish Canoes highlights the roots of the Canoe Journey and the important role that canoes played in its revitalization during the 1989 Paddle to Seattle.

“It was a big learning process for us. It didn’t just happen in 1989,” explained Tulalip carver Joe Gobin, about the preparation involved in the Paddle to Seattle. “Frank Brown and Ray Fryberg Sr. got our [Tulalip] Board involved and the Board saw how this was something missing in our culture. They sent us to different reservations to learn, to Lummi and Makah, because none of us knew how to carve a canoe. We all talked about it and the tools we needed, and how when we were making the canoe we were bringing the tree back to life. And it did come back to life on the reservations, and it brought back so many things in our culture that were forgotten. I am glad to see this exhibit here.”

Lena Jones, the center’s curator of education, says guests will leave knowing the importance of canoes in Coast Salish culture. “Our ancestors helped keep a rich environment with superb art. We hope the exhibit will help people appreciate the social gatherings of the Coast Salish people and help our young people recognize their community’s role in revitalizing important Coast Salish traditions that can, and do, help the region.”

For more information on “Coast Salish Canoes,” please visit the Hibulb Cultural Center and Natural History Preserve’s website at www.hibulbculturalcenter.org.

Brandi N. Montreuil: 360-913-5402: bmontreuil@tulalipnews.com