Centuries ago, long before the first Europeans came to the Northwest, the Cowlitz and other indigenous tribes used the rivers as their transportation routes.
The Cowlitz Indian Tribe returned to the Columbia River on Friday to remember its past and to forge new bonds and friendships.
A 31-foot canoe carrying tribal members pulled up shortly after noon to the beach at Vancouver’s Marine Park. The Cowlitz canoe was accompanied by a second canoe from Portland All Nations, which is open to Native Americans regardless of tribal affiliation, and two motorized escorts.
“What it means to us is to honor our ancestors,” said Tanna Engdahl, the tribe’s spiritual leader, as she waited for the canoes to arrive at Marine Park. “The Cowlitz don’t do anything without calling to our ancestors.”
Rivers are the lifeblood running through the Cowlitz, Engdahl said.
“Most of us on this beach are related,” she said. “Standing by our relatives on this beach are our ancestors.”
Members of the Cowlitz Drum Group started singing and drumming long before the canoes could be spotted near the Interstate 205 Bridge. Cowlitz members in their canoe could be heard repeating the same song as they pulled up to the beach where more than 100 people had assembled.
After the Portland All Nations canoe was invited ashore, the two canoes were pulled onto the beach. One person passed out bottles of water to the paddlers, who had put into the Columbia River in Camas nearly three hours earlier and paddled down river to Marine Park.
Two Cowlitz shuttle buses were ready to carry the group to the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site for lunch from ilani, the Cowlitz Tribe’s casino that opened a little more than two years ago.
Friday’s Columbia River canoe journey is part of the Paddle to Lummi, which is expected to attract 10,000 people and more than 100 canoes to the Lummi Nation, northwest of Bellingham, from July 24 to 28. The Cowlitz canoe will be hauled by trailer up to the Squaxin Island Tribe, northwest of Olympia, where it will continue its journey to Lummi.
Healing old wounds
More than a dozen years ago, during the tribe’s long fight to get its initial reservation established west of La Center, powerful voices in Clark County told the tribe that its reservation and casino belonged elsewhere.
Both the Vancouver City Council and then-Clark County Board of Commissioners adopted resolutions opposing the tribe’s casino. Both later rescinded their resolutions but only after the federal government granted the Cowlitz its reservation and opponents exhausted their avenues to continue fighting it in court.
On Friday, Vancouver Mayor Anne McEnerny-Ogle stood quietly beside Engdahl as the spiritual leader welcomed the canoes, a powerful image of how much the political atmosphere has changed.
“The mayor is here,” Phil Harju, Cowlitz vice chairman, said before the canoes arrived. “The city of Vancouver was the first one to withdraw their official opposition.”
Red handprint
Although some old wounds have healed, a disturbing trend was front and center during Friday’s event.
Many of those who attended, including some Cowlitz members in their canoe, wore red handprints on their faces to highlight missing and murdered indigenous women and girls.
According to the Urban Indian Health Institute, there were 5,712 reports of missing American Indian and Alaska Native women in 2016, but only 116 were logged into the U.S. Department of Justice database.
Federal lawmakers, including U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Sunnyside, have reintroduced Savanna’s Act to develop protocols for reporting and investigating murders and disappearances, and to improve data collection and collaboration. The bill is named after Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind, a 22-year-old pregnant member of the Spirit Lake Tribe in North Dakota who was murdered in August 2017.
According to a May 14 news release from Newhouse, Native American and Alaska Native women are murdered at a rate 10 times higher than the national average. Eighty-four percent of Native American women experience some form of violence in their lifetimes.
Duane Garvais Lawrence, assistant chief for the tribe’s police department, wore a red handprint on his face and recited the number of 5,712 missing women and girls from memory.
“As a father of five daughters, it was appalling to me,” Lawrence said. “It literally made me sick to my stomach.”
