PORT ANGELES — The Lower Elwha Klallam tribe’s Heritage Center will be a place of learning about both the presentand the past, say tribal members.
It will be a place where tribal members can get an education, learn a trade and be taught about their own culture.
“Out heritage has always been to teach,” said Verna Henderson, tribal social services director.
The new 9,808-square-foot center under construction at 401 E. First St. in Port Angeles is expected to be up and running in January.
Demolition of much of the former Perry’s Tire & Brake Service building began several weeks ago. The frame of the building will be used for the new center.
Remodeling and construction will cost “a little less than $2 million,” said tribe Executive Director Sonya Tentnowski.
The tribe is paying for construction, and the programs the center will offer will be out of its own funds, Henderson said.
Primarily, the center will offer its services to people enrolled in the tribe’s social welfare services funded by the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program.
But several courses on traditional tribal crafts — such as paddle, basket, mask and drum making — will be open to not just those enrolled in the TANF-funded programs, but to all, Henderson said.
All that anyone needs is an interest.
“They just need to be interested, and willing to learn about the culture,” she said.
Tetnowski said anyone will also be able to watch the tribe’s carvers at work at the center.
“In front, we will also have a retail outlet so people who participate in the class will be able to sell their wares,” she said. “So we are very excited about that, too.”
At the center, those enrolled in the TANF-funded programs can earn General Education Development certificates, learn about running a business or acquire a trade.
The idea, Henderson said, is to develop their interests into a career while getting them more in touch with the tribe’s traditional way of life.
“My goal is to take a kid that people don’t believe in and turn them into entrepreneurs and successful people,” she said.
“There’s not a reason why they can’t have their own business . . . and we will do whatever we can to help them.”
The center also will have its own commercial kitchen where people can learn culinary skills and perhaps use the facility for their own culinary business.
“We would let them run the whole thing,” Henderson said, “and the whole nine yards . . . I just want to be a customer.”
She added, “They could even take over as director of the center.”
But whatever they want to be, the center will nurture, Henderson said.
“If someone can walk into the place and say, ‘I want to be an interior designer,’ then that’s what the girl is going to be,” she said.
Tetnowski said the center provides the building space the tribe has lacked for such uses.
“We don’t have that capacity any of our existing facilities,” she said. “Most of our buildings are pretty small . . . This provides us the ability to provide broader-based training to a larger amount of people.”
Crafts, tales
Along with learning about traditional crafts, the students also can learn how to tell how to tell the tribe’s stories about the region and their past.
Those teachings will go hand-in-hand at the center with learning how to be successful in the modern world.
“The kids can’t visualize the past,” Henderson said.
“I learned my life skills through listening to my elders, and so much of that has been taken away.”
Tetnowski said the center is separate from the cultural center and museum that the tribe is planning on the Tse-Whit-Zen site.
The museum will house the thousands of artifacts unearthed from the site at the west end of Port Angeles Harbor in 2003 and 2004 during construction of a graving yard on Marine Drive to build replacement components for the Hood Canal Bridge.
The discovery of remains and artifacts led to the abandonment of the site as a graving yard.
That museum and cultural center have not been designed, and testing needs to be done for additional artifacts, Tetnowski said, so no date for construction has been set.
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Reporter Tom Callis can be reached at 360-417-3532 or at tom.callis@peninsuladailynews.com.
