PORT ANGELES — A mural depicting 18th-century Port Angeles Native Americans was cleaned today of spray-painted vandalism, including racial epithets, obscenities and a “white power declaration.
Doc Reiss, a member of the Nor’wester Rotary Club which in 1998 commissioned the mural at the entrance to City Pier, said volunteers spent about two hours scrubbing the black spray paint off the mural, leaving only slight damage to the characterization of the Klallam waterfront village.
Muralist Cory Ench will be retained to touch up the work, Reiss said.
A complete report on the mural cleanup and police investigation will appear in Wednesday’s editions of the Peninsula Daily News.
Earlier report:
PORT ANGELES – Faces of Native Americans depicted on a scene of the Ennis Creek waterfront that would become east Port Angeles are blacked out.
A “white power” declaration is painted over the canoes.
Obscenities and racial slurs cover the canoes and other depictions of a serene Klallam village of Y’ennis around 1750.
A crudely drawn devil face seemingly floats in the sky.
The nine-year-old mural on the outside of the Arthur D. Feiro Marine Lab building near City Pier is covered with these depictions, but is covered with huge tarpaulin since the vandalism was discovered Friday.
The faces of the people in the painting are based on real members of the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe, many of whom are still alive.
But the incident is not being investigated by Port Angeles police as a hate crime, Police Chief Terry Gallagher said.
“A hate crime is usually directed toward a person, and this is a piece of property,” he said of the mural, painted by Port Townsend artist Cory Ench for Nor’wester Rotary Club and unveiled in 1998.
The mural and a companion mural showing the Puget Sound Cooperative Colony about 100 years later were painted at a cost of about $25,000.
The second mural was not vandalized.
“It is too bad that something like this had to take place,” said Frances Charles, chairwoman of the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe.
“We are hoping that we can restore the painting as much as we can.
“We really feel it is attacking some of the elders that are still with us and some that have passed before.
