< Back | Home

Native Americans used canoes during and before colonial times to travel across bodies of water. Originally, canoes were dugouts made entirely of wood. The Oliver family canoe is made of fiberglass and the bottom is lined with cedar.

Marie Sagaberd (green shirt) rode in the canoe upon their arrival of the final landing.

There were nearly 90 canoes in Washington's 2009 Annual Canoe Project. LCC Housekeeper Marie Sagaberd and her son William, a student at LCC, participated in the canoe project for the first time with their entire family in the summer of 2009. There were 69 family members and close friends that came from various areas of the world to honor Marie's uncle, Emmett Oliver. Participants in the project drove or rowed to various Native American reservations in the state.

Marie's family went on the canoe journey together to honor her uncle (center) Emmett Oliver. HE is the oldest member of her family.

Canoe families were greeted with a song.

A unifying journey

Annual canoe expedition honors tribal ancestors

By: Dillon Blanks

Posted: 2/4/10

LCC Housekeeper Marie Sagaberd, her son William and 67 other members of their family spent a week of summer traveling through Washington for the state's 2009 Annual Canoe Journey. The entire family participated to honor Marie's uncle - a 96-year-old retired Coast Guard Lieutenant Commander.

"He's just the most beautiful person," Marie said. "When you're in his presence, you just feel so great. To me, I probably feel that way because I think of him as a part of my dad and he's been gone since 1992."

Marie's uncle, Emmett Oliver, also worked for the state of Washington in a program that worked on keeping Native American students from dropping out of school. He traveled the state and visited different reservations to work with these students.

Washington was on the verge of celebrating its 150th anniversary. The state wanted to include the Native American population as a part of their celebration. They asked Oliver how they could honor the culture and he put the Annual Canoe Project into motion. The project would mean a journey for those who chose to participate. They would visit different reservations on the west coast by land and canoe, and learn more about Native American reservation culture.

Oliver talked to reservations in Washington and asked them to participate. The project started in 1989. There were nine canoes on this journey. Nearly 90 canoes took part in the 2009 Annual Canoe Project.

Getting the family together and prepared for the project was no easy task. First, they had to raise money for the construction of their canoe. They had three months to come up with $22,000. It was a collective effort from every family member.

"There were things that people did that … we didn't even know what they were doing, but everybody knew they had to contribute to get our canoe paid for," Marie said. Some family members had garage sales and one member, a teacher, sold ice cream at her school with her daughter. Grants also helped cover the cost.

A canoe builder named John Smith built the canoe for Marie's family. There were slim pickings on canoe builders, but Oliver had seen John construct canoes before and trusted him. "This is an art that isn't even known well anymore," Marie said. "It's a fallen art that we don't have and that was part of our uncle's wanting - not to lose that."

Once the canoe was built, Marie's family had to learn how to row. There were practice sessions where members of the family would meet and work together to learn how to use the canoe. It was a difficult task since their family lived all over. Some of them would have to travel for hours to get to the practice destination.

"It was quite a detail for us to do this when none of us knew quite what to expect," Marie said. Her family's canoe held nine people. Eight sat side-by-side to row and one person, the skipper, sat in the stern to give the family directions.

Marie's canoe was modernized with a one-of-a-kind design. "Cedar strips the bottom part of it, and I believe the upper part was made of fiber glass," William said. "It wasn't an actual dugout where they use a whole log and actually carve it out of the log."

The bird and fish on the sides of the canoe came from a book, "Two Paths" by Ben Smith, that was published on the life of Marie's uncle.

There were 55 blood relatives that helped with the canoe project from beginning to end and the rest were close friends that were like family, bringing the total to 69 people. Ages spanned from seven to 77-years-old. Some of Marie's family members came from places as far as Tokyo to honor her uncle, the oldest member of their family.

The 2009 Annual Canoe Project was an 85-mile journey for the family that started in Potlatch State Park, Wash. and ended in the Suquamish nation in Seattle. There were two crews - ground and water. The water crew consisted of 15-20 people who would take turns paddling the canoe. The ground crew traveled by car from destination to destination. William and Marie were apart of this crew.

The journey introduced a lot of new things to Marie - one of them, camping. "I have never camped before," she said. "I've never been in a tent."

The water crew took off at 3 a.m. on the first night of the journey. The ground crew tore down camp and cleaned up before leaving. "A lot of times we had left over children because their parents were in the canoe," Marie said "They know us, so they got left with their aunts and uncles."

The destinations they visited were Native American reservations. They were fed by the townspeople and camped outside or inside gymnasiums.

"They were very honored that you even came there," Marie said. "They were standing on a beach when our canoes would come in." The canoes would line up in the water and wait for every canoe to arrive. Once all the canoes arrived, the people in them would ask the leader or representative of the reservation if they could stay there - one by one. This is a process that took up to three hours at each stop.

Marie's brother, 76, being an elder, decided that he would like to greet the people of the final landing's reservation in their language. His daughter-in-law and son knew enough to write the words out for him so he could practice. They also helped him annunciate words that were hard to pronounce. When the rowers landed at the final destination, Marie's brother repeated the sentence and told whom they were in English, asking if they could come onto their land.

Once everyone got permission to stay, they would get help bringing their canoes out of the water and laying them in front of the longhouse.

"These canoes were 5,000 pounds," William said. Moving them was a combined effort that took the strength of at least 30 people, some of them Navy men.

One night, a Plains tribesman gathered Marie and her whole family. He talked about the canoe journey, what it means to the people, how to act on the journey and how not to act.

After his speech, he went to each family member individually with a necklace. On one side there was a red bead. This represented Marie's uncle, who they were honoring on the journey. The other side of the necklace had an orange bead. This represented the family's first canoe journey.

From now on, every time Marie and her family participate in the Annual Canoe Project they will receive another bead of a different color. The necklace had a metal ring as its charm, which symbolized the circle of life.

Other canoe families received necklaces that night or already had one from a previous journey. All their necklaces varied. Some of them had participated in the Annual Canoe Project for a full 20 years and received 20 beads. Some canoe families had more than one bead representing family members they were honoring and some of them had none. Two canoe families came from places as far as Hawaii and New Zealand.

When the necklace was given to them, they were asked to be a good person during the trip. Part of this had to do with alcohol and drug usage.

"What he's asking you to do is stay away from it, honor what you're wearing," Marie said. "He's asking you while he's giving it to you, 'will you do this?' And he wants you to answer."

Some of Marie's family members learned how to dance and sing from the Quinault people. Marie and her siblings didn't grow up on a reservation and these are traditions she never got the chance to learn. That night the Quintals took Marie and her family, Lummi people, to a baseball field and taught them how to dance.

Moments like these meant a lot to William. A couple hundred years ago, some of the Native American tribes were at war with white people and each other. One's ancestors died at the hands of another's.

"This is a lot of the feelings that are still out there," William said. "A lot of this is - you're traveling together now, watching out for each other … getting rid of all that."

Marie remembered the Plains tribesman's speech when she received her necklace. "That was a part of this mans teaching - unity," she said. "Not just within your family, but all Indians … This was a long time ago but still those days were going on. They weren't just fighting with the white people, they were fighting amongst themselves."

Marie rode in the canoe upon the landing of the final destination. During her journey, she discovered she was related to Chief Seattle, the Native American that Seattle, Wash. was named after. She and her family also got the chance to learn more about different tribes and life on the reservations. Marie learned more about her parents' heritage. Her mother was Nootsack and her dad was Quinault, Cowlitz, Chinook and Italian.

Marie reflected on her journey as a whole."Personally, my first thought came to my uncle," she said. "The fact that we were able to do this in his lifetime … to be able to share that with this man. What he's accomplished in his life, Indian or not Indian, people don't do this much in their life."

Marie picked up her copy of "Two Paths."

"When I received this book, I didn't know how much my uncle loved my dad," she said. "He mentions his father in this book, but he talks more about my dad and what my dad taught him, what my dad gave him to be who he was.

"I knew my dad and uncle loved one another but I didn't know it was that deep. I probably should've but I didn't until I read this and heard the honoring that this man gave my dad. So, why wouldn't I take that same pleasure in honoring my uncle?"

William respected his family's efforts. "How everyone came and worked together," he said. "There was no 'I' or 'me.' We were a family, we were a group. It wasn't about one person."

Marie and her family are planning to participate in the Annual Canoe Project again this year. She felt a special connection while she was there.

"A lot of people spoke about that, that our ancestors were there," she said. "I believed they were - they had to be with you. Our people were safe on the water, and I'm sure my mom and dad laughed a couple times at the things that were happening."