Quileute Wolf Dancers had crowds enthralled at last year’s Northwest Native Community Celebration. (Photo by Meredith Bachman Hankins)
Tacoma Art Museum (TAM) will pay tribute to area Indian tribes at the second annual Northwest Native Community Celebration on Jan. 29 at the museum, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. In preparation for the event, three canoes from three different tribes – Puyallup, Cowlitz and Muckleshoot – will be installed at the museum for visitors to see up close and learn about. The public is welcome to come and witness the installation on Jan. 15 starting at around 10 a.m., but the real fun takes place Jan. 29 – the museum will be bustling with cultural performances and hands-on art activities for all ages, giving participants the chance to watch, listen and engage in this annual celebration.
Last year at the first event, then called the Coastal Native Festival, many people turned out to celebrate Tacoma’s Native American heritage and experience the arts and culture of Northwest tribes. There were performances from the Sacred Water Canoe Family, Chief Leschi Drum and Dance Group, Puyallup Canoe Family and the Quileute Wolf Dancers.
The name of the event was changed this year to Northwest Native Community Celebration to better describe it, but the same welcoming spirit and festive atmosphere will prevail. And like last year, this event will bring back traditional performances, opportunities to create hands-on crafts, and more than a dozen vendors will have all kinds of art and wares of local tribal artists on view and for sale.
Josh Proehl, community programs manager at TAM, said the beauty of having canoes from three different tribes on display is that visitors can see the differences among such canoes, which people often assume are all the same. “We’re not just throwing in more for more’s sake – we want people to look at all three to see what each one does,” he said. Visitors will learn the fascinating stories behind how these three canoes were made and get a chance to see them up close.
Eagledancer is a 22-foot red cedar Northwest Coast-style dugout canoe that was completed after six months of carving by tribal carver Robert Harju in 2006. It was carved from half of an ancient cedar and provided to the Cowlitz Tribe by United States Forest Service at Gifford Pinchot National Forest. The 600-plus-year-old cedar was a blow-down from the Cispus River drainage south of Randle, Wash.
The canoe’s name, Eagledancer, was given at an Awakening Ceremony. At this sacred ceremony, the spirit of the living cedar tree was awakened as a living canoe. Joe Kalama of the Nisqually Tribe performed this ceremony at the John Barnett Memorial Canoe Races before the canoe entered the water for the first time. Long-time Tribal Chairman John Barnett was instrumental in starting this carving project, as well as in recognizing the need for the formation of the Cowlitz Canoe Family.
A Paddle Out Ceremony will be a highlight of the celebration on Jan. 29.
Museum admission for the Northwest Native Community Celebration is free. To learn more about all that is offered at TAM, visit www.tacomaartmuseum.org.
