Celebration, a biennial festival of Alaska Native culture, officially starts today. But for a handful of paddlers from multiple Southeast communities it started about a week ago.<\/p>\n
Late last week, several canoes \u2014 each carrying about 10 people \u2014 departed from Angoon headed for Juneau, a trip of roughly 100 miles. Canoes from Kake, Ketchikan, Sitka, Angoon, Hoonah and Yakutat made the trip as a part of a recent (but unofficially sanctioned) Celebration tradition started by the One People Canoe Society in 2008.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a huge undertaking to start off, but that was only because it had never been done before,\u201d the society\u2019s president Doug Chilton said, recalling the first Celebration canoe trip he organized eight years ago.<\/p>\n
Chilton and his paddling peers will be arriving in Douglas Harbor today at 11 a.m. The One People Canoe Society expects more than 300 hundred people to show up to welcome the canoes. The event is scheduled to last until 1 p.m.<\/p>\n
Since the inaugural trip, planning the event \u2014 no small logistical feat \u2014 has become easier as more communities have become interested in taking part, Chilton said. And that\u2019s exactly why he helped to start it.<\/p>\n
In 2002, Chilton was invited to a canoe race in Washington, but the race ended up being more of an intertribal canoe journey, he said. After seeing how paddling had revived a significant aspect of Native culture there, Chilton said he became determined to organize a similar event for the Native communities of Southeast Alaska.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to spark the flame that\u2019s been there forever,\u201d Chilton said. \u201cPeople say we lost our culture; we lost our language. But they didn\u2019t go away. They\u2019re still there; they\u2019re smoldering embers, and we can relight them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chilton is not alone in this goal. Celebration, too, was created in the spirit of revitalizing Native culture. During the four-day festival, which runs from today until Saturday, there will be dance performances, language-speaking workshops, art exhibits, regalia reviews, film showings and other events all centered around Native culture.<\/p>\n
Now in its fifth Celebration, the Chilton\u2019s canoe trip is running into a good problem. There are more people interested in paddling than there is space on the canoes, according to Chilton and One People Canoe society member Yarrow Vaara.<\/p>\n
This year, the Alaska Tour Association is lending canoes to the society for those interested in paddling them. Vaara isn\u2019t paddling on the trip this year but she has in years past, and said the trip is \u201ca kind of cultural resurgence.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou become one with the element,\u201d she said, referring to water. \u201cYou don\u2019t hear a motor; you hear the water. It\u2019s life changing for a lot of people, exposing yourself to the elements like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
But paddling isn\u2019t the only aspect of the trip that is helping to keep Southeast Alaska Native culture active. Most people carved their own paddles at workshops in their communities to prepare for the trip. And though the majority of the boats for this year\u2019s trip are made of molded fiberglass, wooden canoes will be making the trip due largely to the efforts of Haines carver Wayne Price.<\/p>\n
Price is carving two 40-foot-long healing dugouts for the Huna Tlingit\u2019s ceremonial return to Glacier Bay later this summer. One of those canoes was supposed to make its maiden voyage during the trip to Celebration, but it wasn\u2019t quite ready in time. Paddlers will be using two other wooden canoes created by Price \u2014 a 28-foot dugout named \u201cJibba,\u201d and a strip canoe \u2014 to make the long trip to Juneau.<\/p>\n
Price is skippering Jibba. He is making the trip with his son, Steven Price, as well as James (Gooch \u00c9esh) Hart and Zack (Tl\u00e9l Tooch Tl\u00e1a.aa) James, who\u2019ve been apprenticing under Price, helping him carve the 40-foot Hoonah dugouts for the past six months.<\/p>\n
Like paddling, Price sees carving as an important aspect of Native culture that must be passed down.<\/p>\n
\u201cCulturally and historically our people had a strong connection with wood,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was our dugouts, it was our clothes, it was our home, it was in our stories, it was our totems, and that connection shouldn\u2019t be broken.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why Price is training his son \u2014 and James and Hart \u2014 to carve dugouts, a task that Chilton said gets to the heart of the canoe trip.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the end goal, to get to the point where everybody is doing something in each community, getting the youth and the elders involved,\u201d Chilton said. \u201cWithout our elders we\u2019re not going to know our history and without our youth, it\u2019s not going to carry on; we need to have them all involved in one way or another.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hart, who paddled in Jibba with Price, said that he is glad that he is able to learn to carve and to paddle.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve won a state championship for basketball, and I\u2019d say arriving for Celebration in a traditional wood canoe beats it,\u201d he said. \u201cJust the raw emotion of everybody singing and dancing. Seeing the culture alive is a sacred feeling I hold pretty near to my heart.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022 Contact reporter Sam DeGrave at 523-2279 or at sam.degrave@juneauempire.com.<\/p>\n
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