Canoe Culture

Canoe Culture & The Canoe Movement

Origins of the Canoe Movement

“The Journey started in Bella Bella by sending a young man who was 14 to an island to fast, pray and to bring back the songs to him. He challenged us to bring back the long, long journey. We started with maybe 50 people and now there are tens of thousands who come into a village—from 1973 when an old one-hundred-year-old canoe went back to a Native village. The Journey solves the problem of alcohol and drugs, by asking, just for this journey, will you stay drug and alcohol free.

“This grandmother on the coast was correct, she brought the canoes in the ’70s. That started the canoe Journey, then came ’89 and the Paddle to Seattle and then Bella Bella. They had 10 canoes from Washington. The first day followed protocol, the second day was Woman’s day— women took charge of the dances, the chiefs were traditional but they still had Women’s day. The third day was

the youth’s day, planned by the youth of Bella Bella.

“The young people chose to have a modern dance, it was their day, their planning. Young people have talent as well as parents and aunties and grandmas and grandpas and on that day they shared their talent.”

History & Tradition

“The legends of the Pacific Coast First Nations tell of the time of the great flood, when the people tied their canoes together side by side. As the waters rose, the people took a stout cedar rope and attached their canoes to a mountaintop. Here they waited until the waters receded, and they were saved.”

— David Neel, The Great Canoes

The cedar canoe has long been a part of Northwest Coast culture. Once used as both transportation and as a spiritual vessel, the canoe tradition faded with the use of motor boats in the late 1800’s. A canoe renaissance has occurred during the last twenty years, however, bringing the canoe back to its place in Northwest Native culture. Two major events marked the return of the canoe tradition. The first was in 1985 when Haida carving master Bill Reid carved a canoe based on the measurements taken from a canoe housed in a museum collection. This canoe, the LooTaas, became an invaluable part of Haida culture.

The second was the journeys that began in 1986 from one Nation to another. The Journeys were more than just traveling from one tribe to another; they were a call to all the Northwest Coast Nations to come together and revive the role of the canoe. Through these journeys, a cultural resurgence took place and the canoe became a symbol for healing, community and cultural revival.

Canoe Journey Visions

Tom Heidelbaugh, Laughing Bear, lived until March of 1997. He was one of the visionaries that saw the potential of the Canoe Nation, and worked tirelessly to help it come to pass.

Tom’s essay “On Intertribal Waters: Vision Stories of the Canoe Nation” is written from the perspective of a canoe Elder looking back from 2050. He ends it with:

“Now we can only dream where the Canoe Way of Knowledge will take us in the future. Our forests are returning. Our waters are being healed and becoming clean and full of life again. Our beaches are safe and rich with clams and

oysters and urchins and sea cucumbers and anemones and sea stars. Seals bark from the waves. Sea otters roister in the kelp forests. The sound of traffic has diminished and the lift drum can be heard up and down the coastline.

Once we sang about Paddling to the stars. This was considered a rap song, made up at La Push long ago. But maybe that is what is calling our dreams. Chief Seattle, in his still memorized speech transliterated by Vi Hilbert, speaks of

wandering beyond the stars. While we pull over the waters of our world, we go into dreams and we become larger in our hearts and minds. Spirit guides us. Perhaps paddling to the Stars and back again is not so strange a dream.

Now, we spend as much time on the water as we do on land. Now, we spend as much time for families as we do for ourselves. Now we dedicate our work to our community and our land as much as we dedicate it to our family. Now we live in balance, finding that smooth passage that only a carved cedar canoe can make over the roughest water on the welcoming shore. Now we ask permission to come to share the beach with our friends and relatives. Now, we are

invited to bring our canoes in and sing and dance as we have always done”.