Gyasi Ross: Tribes celebrate their culture at Canoe Journey

One such pan-Native event that has been growing in popularity and is redefining what it means to be, look, and celebrate being Native is something called “Tribal Journeys” on the Pacific Northwest Coast. Like pow-wows, Tribal Journeys blends many Northwest coastal, New Zealand, Canadian and Alaska Native tribes, tribal practices, songs, dances and foods into a pretty amazing stew and makes something beautiful out of it. The Journey began in 1989 as equal parts political protest, but also an attempt to recapture parts of the Coastal Native way of life that have been overlooked and/or forgotten for a long time. Also, like pow-wows, Tribal Journeys had very modest beginnings, and has steadily gotten bigger and more structured every single year; the host Tribe incurs a lot of expense putting this huge event together that attracts over 15,000 people a day to the host community. Whereas the original “Paddle to Seattle” had 18 canoes, now there are over 100 canoes that make the trek.

It’s grown. And is growing.

Like most truly unique events, words don’t do Tribal Journeys justice. Yet, here’s the basic idea behind it: Tribal Journeys retraces the paths, practices, and protocols of those that went before us, seeing through the eyes of our ancestors. As Chief Si'ahl (commonly referred to as “Seattle”) said, “Our religion is the traditions of our ancestors.” This happens by individual families canoeing from one Native homeland to the next, asking permission to enter those homelands. Historically, it was very important to ask permission and to state whether you were friend or foe—if not, there could be very serious consequences. There are many canoe families on Tribal Journeys—this is historically correct since one tribe could have many different canoe families, since many Native communities were not simply one community. Instead, most “tribes” had many villages and smaller sub-groups that usually spoke a common language.