PHOTO GALLERY: ‘It never occurs to me to stop’

Richard Arlin Walker
Special to ICT

Generations of adverse experiences had perhaps steeled the People’s resilience for times such as these.

An 8.8 earthquake – the sixth-largest ever recorded – rocked the sea floor off the coast of Kamchatka, Russia, on July 29, shoving a subsurface wall of ocean toward Canada and coastal U.S. states at a speed of about 500 mph.

Canoes were on the beach then, en route to the next stop on the Intertribal Canoe Journey, the great annual gathering of Northwest Indigenous canoe cultures. The size of the tsunami wave that was expected to reach Washington state was unknown at the time, but the people were accustomed to facing the unknown.

The grandparents share accounts handed down by their grandparents’ grandparents’ grandparents about the Cascadia quake of 1700 that destroyed villages and sent a tsunami wave to Japan. Quileute culture bearers talk of the great flood that carried relatives in their canoes to a place now known as Chimakum, 110 miles east, where descendants of those carried there still live.

Those were the natural unknowns; others were manmade, such as introduced diseases and land grabs and assimilation policies. And yet, the People could not be stopped. And as a tsunami barrelled toward Washington state, neither would the 2025 Canoe Journey.

Lower Elwha Klallam Chairwoman Frances Charles, whose tribal nation is hosting this year’s event, said late July 29 that canoe skippers and emergency management officials were meeting hourly to monitor wave estimates and talk about the possible strength of post-wave currents. Some canoes were moved to higher ground.

Waves measuring 4.9 feet were reported in Hilo, Hawai’i, and a parking lot was flooded in Oahu. The tsunami seemed to lose muscle by the time it reached Washington’s shores. It arrived just after midnight in the form of 1-foot waves at the Quileute Tribe capital of La Push, on the Pacific Coast. The Washington state Emergency Management Department later that morning reported waves measuring 1.3 feet in the Makah Tribe capital of Neah Bay; and 1.2 feet in Port Angeles in Elwha Klallam territory.

By 5:24 a.m. July 30, the threat had passed and canoes returned to the water. And the Intertribal Canoe Journey, like life, continued on.

‘It never occurs to me to stop’

More than 100 canoes are expected to land at Elwha Klallam on July 31. A five-day cultural celebration – with traditional languages, regalia, songs, dances and foods – will follow.

The Canoe Journey is a showcase of Northwest Indigenous cultures and resilience, Chairwoman Charles said. Elwha’s hosting – July 31 to Aug. 5 – takes place 20 years after the tribal nation and its allies stopped a state construction project that disturbed remains at Tse-whit-zen, an ancestral village site, and about 15 years after the removal of two dams that blocked salmon from their habitat on the Elwha River. The river’s natural processes are being restored and the salmon are coming back, Charles said.  

Despite all that has happened to the People politically and otherwise, Charles said, “We are still strong.”

Indeed. The state tried to take away the People’s languages and kill their cultures, but the languages and cultures survived. Treaty rights are challenged, but tribal nations stand ready to defend them in courts. Dams were built that block salmon passage, and the People stand tough until the dams are brought down. Muscles get sore and the sea gets rough, but canoe pullers endure.

“I get to where I’m tired, but not to the point where I want to give up,” Samish Nation canoe puller Loralei Tillotson said in an earlier interview.

“I get tired,” she said, “but it never occurs to me to stop.”