NEAH BAY — A prayer song about forgiveness will bless the beginning of construction of a community art center and cottage industry incubator next to the Makah Lutheran Church during a ceremony today.
Makah dancing, drumming, singing and food, as well as a ground-breaking ceremony for the 4,000-square foot Makah Lutheran Community Art Center will be at about 2 p.m., after framing begins at about 9 a.m., said David Sternbeck, pastor of the church.
Foundation laid
Volunteers already have laid the foundation for the building at 1290 Backroad Road — to the left at the bottom of the hill as one drives into Neah Bay — which is expected to open at the end of 2010, Sternbeck said.
It will encompass a carving shed for creating native art and room for classes about cottage industry, business and finance, Sternbeck said.
A quilt of Makah design will be raffled as a fundraiser for the project.
Also, Steve Moser, Sequim representative of Thrivent Financial for Lutherans, will present Sternbeck with a $10,000 check, as a grant to the center.
Dwayne Martin, from Tofino Vancouver Island, will bless the property with his father’s prayer song, or tsika, which he has been given permission to sing.
The song “is about moving toward you in a good way,” said Sternbeck, a member of the Ehattisaht tribe of western Vancouver Island.
It is a song about forgiveness.
The last residential school on the North American continent closed on Vancouver Island in 1984, Sternbeck said.
At the schools, young people were taken from their families, and attended schools that taught Christian religion and prohibited their language and culture.
Both Dwayne Martin and his father, Levi Martin, “had been abused in these schools,” Sternbeck said.
“Levi felt like the creator had given him this song,” Sternbeck said, “that he was to begin moving toward those people who had hurt him so he could begin to heal.
“When we don’t practice forgiveness, it begins to destroy us.”
He said the song represented the aim of the Lutheran Church in building and operating the center.
“We want the church to be moving toward the community in a good way, in a place of forgiveness, embracing the Makah culture and being a part of that healing journey,” Stermbeck said.
One the first floor of the two-story building will be a 35-to-40-foot carving shed for making canoes, totem poles and other wooden objects, with instructors available to teach how to make tools. Anthony Pascua will in charge of the carving shed.
Space will be set aside on both floors for classrooms to be used as cottage industry incubators.
Free classes
Sternbeck’s vision is that free classes — funded through grants and donations — will be offered on how to set up eBay accounts, build web sites, market cultural art forms, establish businesses and manage both business and personal finances.
One other large classroom area will be used for teen outreach into the community, he added.
Instructors also will include June Williams, a Makah elder; Maria Pascua, head of the language program at the Makah Cultural and Research Center; John Goodwin and Steve Pendleton, all of whom will donate their time, Sternbeck said.
Construction is being overseen by building contractor Dustin Derma of Derma Construction in Port Angeles.
About six Makah members and some 20 volunteers from the Grace Lutheran Church in Crescent City, Calif., poured the foundation a couple of weeks ago.
Another group from Longview, the Machines of Mercy, donated the rough framing materials, and will help frame on Saturday.
Sternbeck, who has worked in Neah Bay for the last seven years, is a member of Lutheran Association of Missionaries and Pilots US. He said he is the third Native American pastor ever ordained in the Lutheran Church Missouri Senate Northwest District.
The tribe of which he is a member is one of the 14 bands of the Nuu-chah-nult, as are Makah, he said.
“The church and the government, when the dominant culture first made contact, was instrumental in removing much of our culture,” he said.
The center “has been a real opportunity to help restore those things that had been removed from them, helping them live in a bicultural approach to life.
“Like my cousin says, the outsiders aren’t going home.”
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Managing Editor/News Leah Leach can be reached at 360-417-3531 or leah.leach@peninsuladailynews.com.
