After four years, tribal canoes journey Salish Sea once more

TULALIP SUPPORT BOAT, Salish Sea — Cheers erupted from canoes Big Brother and Big Sister as Shawn Edge plunged into the 60-degree waters early Sunday morning. He was paying his dues for mistakenly calling one of the canoes a boat. 

The Tulalip Tribes’ canoe family were on their way to Muckleshoot lands, the last leg of a more than 100-mile journey through their ancestral highways to the sandy shores of Alki Beach. 

A sea of people waited on the shores Sunday afternoon to welcome about a hundred canoes to Muckleshoot. The canoe families traveled from villages spanning Warm Springs, Ore., to Alaska, converging at stops along the shores of the outer coast and Salish Sea to share community, songs, meals and stories. It was the first journey since 2019 — since the pandemic began — and for many, a needed return to the water.

“Once we get on the water, that’s where I feel most joy,” Monie Ordonia, a Tulalip elder, said while taking a break on the tribes’ support boat. “I’m the elder puller, and it feels so good to be with these younger generations, seeing them carry on our culture.”

Running on nothing more than a few hours of sleep and the relaxing cadence of skipper Andrew Gobin’s voice kicking off songs, Tulalip people quickly pulled Big Sister and Big Brother from the shores of Suquamish where they’d spent a day resting.

More than 30 canoe families had signed up to share song, dance and stories in Suquamish’s House of Awakened Culture on the shores of Port Madison Bay on Saturday. About 10 hours in, the thrum of Quinault Nation’s drumbeats and voices carried across the Salish Sea as the sun faded and moonlight illuminated more than 90 canoes lining the grass. Dads danced with their daughters just outside the doors. Kids warmed their hands over a crackling fire pit. 

Hundreds of tents filled Suquamish land, near wayfinders for the grave of Chief Seattle, siʔaɬ, a Duwamish and Suquamish leader and the namesake for canoe families’ upcoming destination across the water.

“There’s songs and stories and place names that are associated with the ancient landscape here. It’s important to maintain those and keep those going, for our cultural, spiritual and mental health and also for tribal sovereignty,” said Suquamish Chair Leonard Forsman, who was on the tribe’s docked support boat.

Return to Seattle

Descendants of signatories to the Treaty of Point Elliott were among those who organized the first Paddle to Seattle to Alki Beach in 1989, resurrecting a centuries-old tradition of navigating the region’s waters by canoe. Emmett Oliver, a survivor of a federal Native American boarding school in Tulalip, was credited with its creation.

For decades since, dozens of canoe families from the outer coast and Salish Sea have converged at various villages along the shores each summer. 

It was Oliver’s dream to see 100 canoes from nations up and down the region land together on the shores, his daughter Marylin Bard said at a ceremony in Suquamish on Saturday. 

On Sunday, that dream was realized, as about a hundred canoes, pulled by hundreds of people, carved through rolling waves on their way to Alki.

“It’s always good to get into that atmosphere of seeing the sun rise as you’re pulling out of the village, seeing the landscape and being near the water,” Forsman said. “Just traveling in that way — it’s hard to describe. It’s the old way of traveling. It brings you back to that center, you and the water together.” 

A canoe full of Swinomish youth yelled out to Tulalip’s canoes, jokingly offering a head start as they paused to rest. They soon sped ahead of the other canoes. 

People piloting support boats — fishing boats, tribal police boats, leisure craft equipped with snacks, sometimes bathrooms and other necessities for canoe pullers — called out words of encouragement, and often poked fun at those slowing down as their arms grew fatigued. 

Skippers, the people at the back of the canoes in charge of monitoring the tides, keeping the canoe family motivated and safe, often started chants or songs to keep the paddles in sync.

“You need to make sure they’re not looking like a caterpillar,” joked Douglas James, who is Quinault and a skipper for the Song Birds Canoe Family.

As the Tulalip canoes pulled up to Alki on Sunday afternoon, Natosha Gobin, a Lushootseed language teacher, introduced the crew to Muckleshoot leaders and asked permission to come ashore in her native language as dozens of canoes had before their arrival. 

“We are Sduhubš,” Gobin said. “We traveled here together on gifts from our ancestors.”

As they had for dozens of canoes earlier in the day, the Muckleshoot leaders welcomed them.

For future generations

Many people remember their first canoe journey. For some, it was fighting massive swells for 12 or more hours while trying to get up the coast and into the Strait of Juan de Fuca. For others, it was the closeness they felt with relatives from near and far, and the closeness they felt with their culture and ancestors.

Being back on the water after four years, for many, was a reminder of past journeys, and the need for more to come. 

For Muckleshoot Vice Chair Donny Stevenson, that first journey a decade ago to Quinault helped him find himself.

“That was a point in my life where I started to worry about things like legacy, and whether you were making your family and your ancestors proud and how I represented that,” he said at Alki on Sunday. “That connection when you’re on the water is something that is tangible, it’s real. I don’t have to think about whether my ancestors were traveling with me, I felt that in the core of who I am.”

There were generations who were legally barred from sharing their songs, dances and prayers, in an era of federally mandated assimilation. Now, generations are carrying forth these traditions through canoe culture, through the journey. For some, that tradition started this year. Others have been practicing it for decades.

Luschiim Charlie, an 81-year-old Cowichan elder, has been out on the water since he was 3 years old. 

He sat outside the Suquamish House of Awakened Culture next to his granddaughter Bella as his daughter Sonya Charlie pulled Bella’s hair into tight, neat braids Saturday morning. Sonya Charlie said she’d learned to braid when she was around Bella’s age, dancing powwow. 

Luschiim Charlie pondered how it felt to be joined by his kids and grandkids, some on their first journey, out on the water.

 “It brings tears to my eyes, from joy and happiness,” Luschiim Charlie said as Bella wrapped her arms around him. “The things they do reminds me of the things I used to do.”