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A Canoe Family journey
June 2006, The Herald
TULALIP – Rain threatens to pour from dark clouds. It isn’t any trouble to the Indians singing on the beach at Tulalip Bay.
Rain is a friend, welcoming them.
For thousands of years, canoes have set out into the inky bay no matter the weather.
It will be the same today.
There is a drum, voices.
A song comes out across the water.
Big Brother slides into the bay.
The carved cedar canoe gently rocks back and forth, back and forth.
On land, Big Brother is silent, waiting. In the water he comes alive with the beat of the drum.
When Carla Rose Jones asked her father for a canoe paddle, he said no.
Generations had passed since the Tulalip Tribes last used traditional canoes to commune with the bay. In the late 1980s, they began to remember how to breathe water.
Carla’s father, master carver Jerry Jones, gave them the tools. He selected some cedar, leaving tobacco and other gifts in their place, and created two dugout canoes, Big Sister and Li’l Sis. He built a strip canoe, Big Brother.
Jones also carved the tribe a choir of paddles, giving them to honored tribal members.
He laid them in the arms of those who taught Lushootseed, the ancient tribal Salish dialect. He gave them to young Indians he knew who found their heritage out on the water.
The paddles and canoes gave them all a way to remember.
With Jones, Tulalips knew again how to sit hip-tight against the inside of a canoe, and how to pull their cedar siblings through the water.
Then Jones taught them to carve. To show them how to remember.
Carla saw all this. She thought her father would make her paddle next.
She asked at 16.
No.
At 18. No.
At 21. No.
She asked, “Why not?”
Because she was his daughter, he said.
That made her different, he told her. She would make her paddle herself.
A dozen men and women gingerly step into Big Brother. Row by row, they ease themselves down onto narrow benches.
They run their hands over the smooth wood. Nearby, on the rough sand, gulls pluck at scavenged salmon.
Before the day’s journey begins, the Tulalips dip their paddles into the water and pray. It’s a greeting, both to the water and to their ancestors beneath it.
Then, “Hoh!”
The pulling begins.
The paddles pierce the surface, pull it back. Big Brother carries them.
Carla paid $75 to take her father’s carving class. Angry and ashamed – why did her father punish her? – she sat among the other students and started working.
It took hours.
Using traditional tools handcrafted by her father, Carla stroked layers of cedar, coaxing its shape to emerge.
Carla remembered her father carrying all three Tulalip canoes in a series of moments like these, more meditation than labor.
She was a teenager. When her father wasn’t home, she knew he was in a parking lot, bringing Big Sister to life. His first canoe.
Carla joined everyone to celebrate when Big Sister first pulled the tribe out over the bay.
She saw her father change that day.
She did, too, only she didn’t realize it until now, with finding her paddle’s rounded head, sharpening the end into a point.
Like her father, she came alive.
Out on the water, each paddle moves in concert. Water welcomes them, pull, pull, pull.
The waves crest and crash, sprinkling the Canoe Family with water seasoned by journeys taken over thousands of years.
Water grows strong against the canoe, the Canoe Family answers in a song for the will of the ancestors.
Pull.
Muscles ache.
Pull.
Eagles circle.
Pull.
Finally, “White rock!”
They stop. The landmark gleams in the day’s final rays of sunshine, near the shore.
Paddles are lifted, stood upright against the inside of Big Brother, where brothers and sisters sit, hip to hip.
Carla Rose brushed a final coat of clear finish onto her paddle.
Done.
It was simple. Honey-colored, satin-smooth.
She held it up for her father to see. Does he approve?
He said nothing, took it away. A day went by. Another. A week. Did he hate it? Did she make a mistake?
Carla was at the tribal marina, readying for pulling practice, when her paddle came back.
It was no longer a tool.
It was her companion, one her father knew she would trust and need in years to come.
A carved orca now swam across the blade, his fin and flank marked with abalone.
It was red, turquoise, black.
Brilliant. Worthy of an Indian princess.
It was her reward, Carla believed, for carving the paddle herself.
When her father died in 2003, her paddle began to hold a different meaning.
It became a symbol.
Carla understood.
When her father taught her how to carve her paddle, he showed her what it means to be an Indian.
It is said that when a tribal member dips a paddle into the water, the ancestors know.
Sometimes, when a Tulalip struggles to match the pace with the rest of the Canoe Family, the ancestors appear, just beneath the surface.
They show the Tulalips how to lean in, how to pull the water with their whole bodies, how to work as a family. The old ways Jones taught them, when he was alive.
Until another comes along, tribal members will rely on those like Jerry Jones, beneath the water.