PORT ANGELES — From beading necklaces to cutting yards, from building sweat lodges to harvesting shellfish, from making drums to pumping septic tanks.
Preparations for the 2005 Canoe Journey hosted by the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe are picking up speed daily.
Most of the work is by volunteers — many of them non-Native — said Darryl Barkley, one of four tribal coordinators for the Aug. 1-6 celebration.
About 80 canoes from 25 to 20 Native American and Canadian First Nations tribes are expected to land at Port Angeles on Aug. 1. An estimated 8,000 people will attend the subsequent festivities.
To meet their expectations, the 800-plus Lower Elwha Klallams are working overtime and enlisting the support of other Northwest tribes.
And they’re getting a boost from non-Native residents of the North Olympic Peninsula.
Volunteer organizations
A recent meeting at First Presbyterian Church of Port Angeles enlisted at least 20 members of that church alone, plus 20 other organizations which said they’d volunteer from now until the canoes land.
Among them are employees of Larson Anthropological and Archaeological Services of Gig Harbor which labored alongside Lower Elwha workers at the Tse-whit-zen site on the former Hood Canal Bridge graving yard in Port Angeles.
Teen-agers who visit the Dream Center for homeless youth in Port Angeles have volunteered for the Canoe Journey. They will receive T-shirts.
Teachers from Dry Creek Elementary School will participate, too.
Horticulturist and Peninsula Daily News gardening columnist Andrew May, president of the Port Angeles Business Association, visited the Lower Klallam reservation to instruct workers in pruning trees outside the tribal center.
Theme for the Canoe Journey is “Visions of Our Past: Honoring Tse-whit-zen.”
The ancestral village and the 335 complete burials and 13,000 artifacts that were unearthed on the waterfront property have given this Canoe Journey a special significance, Barkley said.
“They’re coming here because of Tse-whit-zen,” he said.
“This one will probably be the largest in a number of years because of Tse-whit-zen.”
