Let me start out with a preface though:
I have been volunteering over the past half year or so with the Ridgefield Wildlife Refuge System at their educational Chinookan Plankhouse. The main season is during the summer, when the refuge is open, it's sunny, warm, and a great place to visit and walk.
Throughout the summer I am a docent who guides and interprets the Plankhouse and it's many artifacts to folks who visit. It's a very satisfactory job, culturally interpreting a traditional Chinookan structure, with many recreated and authentic artifacts inside.
I started the job to explore more about the native cultures of the area, and to learn what the Native American experience was on this side of the continent. So you probably could envision how excited I was when I was asked to volunteer at this year's Winter Gathering.
That is where my day begins.
I wake up around 8:00 AM, shower, and get cleaned up for the day. It's starting to become habit; waking up early and going to bed early. (I fight sleepiness even at this hour of 10 PM on a Saturday) Once I start driving, in a typical Northwest fashion, the rain picks up.
What a lovely day.
Once I arrive, only a handful of organizers are there, those who I have met and talked with before. I know most of them by name. I have not come prepared, for there is lots of mud. Lots of rain. But I run on the excitement of the day ahead.
Once my duties are done for the morning, I go to "hang out" in the Plankhouse, where there is a fire started in both of the pits, and folks are just beginning to trickle in and start chatting. Immediately I notice the fires, and how they bring the house to life.
I have come to have a passing friendship with the vice chair of the tribe, and as he and I talk, I can really see in him the identity of what it means to be "Chinook". He speaks of how the ceder begins to breathe, and how the light works its way onto the walls. The gathering of descendants of the ancestors helps to build the house again, and to reconstruct it's very meaning to the Chinook peoples. And I feel it too. I can see the warmth of the house coming to, radiating from the hearth.
This is in stark contrast to giving tours of the Plankhouse. When we give tours, we try to describe what it would have looked like back when Lewis & Clark came across the actual village of Cathlapotle, and how it would have functioned in the early 1800's. But there is no denying it. The Plankhouse is usually a dusty empty place usually devoid of the very culture we are interpreting.
That is why attending today was so important for me. As a steward and a volunteer docent of the Chinook culture and peoples, I want to experience the tribe today. I want to see the modern Chinook tribe. Their richness, reality, and retrospective on the past. And that is what I got today at the Winter Gathering.
I will not go into too much detail, as many parts of the Chinook culture are sacred and are not openly promoted or explained. I am extremely privileged and thankful though for the experience I saw and heard today. I acted primarily as an observer, taking it in. The only time where I even remotely participated was when I was invited to receive gifts for my volunteer service. I was allowed a chance on the floor; the sacred and blessed floor reserved for those of the tribe only. And with that invitation I received some tea and a beautiful necklace from the Chinook tribe. What amazing gifts that left me speechless.
All I can say to that is mahsie; thank you.
