Land Bridge, five years old, draws people to crossroads, meeting place

o Storyteller Ed Edmo: http://ededmo.tripod.com/id15.html

Her long braids bouncing with each step, Tyese Arthur danced an American Indian “circle dance” Saturday morning with about a dozen other members of the N’chi Wanapum Canoe Family. In beaded moccasins, her feet hopped and stepped to the beating drums.

As they moved in a circle, Arthur and the other fancy dancers from Warm Springs, Ore., also chanted traditional American Indian songs at the base of the Vancouver Land Bridge to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the project’s completion.

Part of the Confluence Project, the Vancouver Land Bridge was inspired by Maya Lin, designer of the Vietnam War Memorial. Its purpose is to reconnect the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site to the Columbia River.

The site’s history as a crossroads continued without a beat, even Saturday. Just as the ceremony began, a BNSF train stopped on the railroad berm overpass, providing a noisy background throughout the event. On the other side of the crowd, vehicles zipped by on Highway 14. And overhead, small planes from Pearson Field and fighter jets from Portland International Airport added to the cacophony.

“We have a confluence of sounds this morning,” said Jane Jacobsen, executive director of the Confluence Project.

Storyteller Ed Edmo engaged visitors with several American Indian stories, including the Colville tribe’s legend of how the Columbia River was created.

“Coyote took a big stick and dug up at the top of the mountains and dug and sang a powerful song,” Edmo chanted and encouraged others to join him.

They did. And they followed his hand motions. A child moved closer to see Edmo’s animal puppets, including Grandmother Bear, who wore a headscarf. Edmo was joined by his granddaughter, Siale Edmo, 10, to help him tell one story.

It was an appropriate story to commemorate the Land Bridge, which tells the story of river, land and people along the Columbia River.

“The Land Bridge respects the idea of respecting Mother Earth and each other, and reconnecting the people and the river again,” said Antone Minthorn, Confluence Project chairman and former chairman of Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation.

More than a half-million people have used the Land Bridge to cross from Fort Vancouver National Historic Site to the Columbia River in the past five years, said Tracy Fortmann, superintendent of Fort Vancouver.