Apr. 20—PULLMAN — A small shed on the Washington State University campus buzzes with activity.
Volunteer workers map out the next cuts they will make in the process of shaping a 200-year-old western red cedar log from the Selway River canyon into a dugout canoe.
It’s nearly complete but important work remains before the craft is ready for a trip down the lower Snake River as part of an annual event to connect people of the Palouse People and other tribes of the Snake and Columbia rivers to the land and water that has sustained them for tens of thousands of years.
For Ione Jones, a member of the Palouse Tribe, the craft taking shape little by little is the culmination of years of dreaming, planning and work. Sitting in it and pulling a paddle through the Snake’s surface to propel it down river will have both real and symbolic implications.
It will mean the Palouse People continue to occupy their homeland, even if it is much changed by the four lower Snake River dams, the government’s attempt to remove the tribe from the area and the invasion of nonnative plants.
“This is a traditional shovelnose dugout based on Snake River and Columbia descendants, and we are adapting it to post-lower Snake River dams, because the dugouts that our families were able to use are all pre-lower Snake River dams,” she said. “All of their dugouts, they were able to go in a free-flowing system with more rapids. But that’s not what we have today. Because of that, we are doing our best to maintain the integrity of our culture by creating the first shovelnose, post-lower Snake River dams.”
The Palouse Tribe is centered along the lower Snake River and parts of the middle Columbia River. Some of its members refused to move onto reservations and remained in the canyon at the time the federal government was signing treaties with tribes throughout the Northwest. Some, like Jones’ ancestors, received land patents through the Homestead Act. But they were later taken under eminent domain by the federal government during its dam-building era. Jones and her nonprofit organization, Khimstonik, are working to get the land back.
Other Palouse tribal members became part of the federally recognized native governments like the Yakama Nation, the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation and other tribes in the Columbia River Basin.
Jones said dugout canoes were one of the the main modes of transportation for Native people in the region. They were used for everyday travel, trade and to gather traditional foods.
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“For us, this canoe, this is not meant for the museum. It’s not meant as an artifact. It’s meant as a cultural and traditional ecological knowledge tool,” she said.
The build
It’s one of those spring days where the weather can’t make up its mind. The sun is out but the wind is busy. Jones wears work coveralls, a sweatshirt and a head bandana. A day earlier, Jones and the others working on the project tested the canoe in a tributary to Paradise Creek. It was free of leaks and didn’t roll or twist — good signs.
In a few weeks, Jones and husband Jessep, 14-year-old son Jessep Jr. and 12-year-old daughter Cyanne will participate in the Healing Snake River, Canoe Camp and Paddle, an annual event organized by Jones that attracts participants from tribes throughout the region. They will start at Lyons Ferry and end at Fishhook Park, upstream of Pasco, Wash. Last year’s event had people from nine tribes.
“We had Puyallup, Kalispell, Spokane, Kalamath, Wanapum, Palouse and Yakama and Wallula from the Umatillas. So we had nine separate nations with us at our journey. And then we also had other community-based organizations that donated to us.”
Along the way they will use shavings from the canoe as mulch to help native flora they will plant, such as chokecherries, dogbane hemp, purple sage, Indian tobacco and Western yarrow. That is part of an effort to restore the canyon, reclaim their land and prepare the river for the time in the future when she hopes the dams are gone.
“They were built to be breached. They were never built to be permanent, and because those dams are there, we are facing warmer waters. So our salmon are having a hard time returning. Our native plants are no longer along the river banks. Our soils are not as strong as they once were,” she said. “All of this is about building up and creating and preparing Snake River to be free flowing.”
For Jones and her immediate family, this will be their first dugout.
“I can’t even describe it to be Palouse on Palouse land. That is land acknowledgement.”
Barker may be contacted at ebarker@lmtribune.com.