Like many other museum exhibitions, Cedar and Sea’s display cabinets are stocked with traditional items like boxes, fishing hooks, baskets, and carving tools. The majority of the items in this exhibit are not artifacts, which is a significant distinction from many other Indigenous exhibits at nontribal institutions.
Sea, Cedar, and ntsayka il i ukuk The newest displays at the Columbia River Maritime Museum in Astoria, called “This is Our Place,” showcase the traditional culture and contemporary communities of Indigenous people living along the northern Pacific coast.
The North Oregon Coast Museum has undergone a significant transformation. There hasn’t been much Indigenous participation at the Columbia River Maritime Museum since it debuted in 1963. Boats, artifacts, and exhibits centered on the last 200 years of mainly EuroAmerican maritime history have been the main features of its current 26,000 square foot gallery area.
However, the museum is also searching for ways to fill in the gaps in the narrative it has been telling as it considers a $30 million restoration project that will include the new 24,671-square-foot Mariner’s Hall as the centerpiece.
The museum’s curator, Jeff Smith, stated that rather than using the more typical museum-to-tribe strategy, the effort to engage with Native tribes has been more word-of-mouth than institutional.
Smith claimed that it was highly individualized and not institution-to-institution. In this manner, we were able to communicate their culture while simultaneously concentrating on the artists and their work.
The stunning and expansive Cedar and Sea, which features movies showcasing various artisans and their crafts, is a clear example of that strategy. However, a tiny photographic display called ntsayka il i ukuk is a direct collaboration with the Chinook Indian Nation, a tribe in Washington at the mouth of the Columbia River that is presently vying for federal recognition.
In addition to further exhibits on Indigenous culture and history around the region as the museum grows, Bruce Jones, executive director of the museum, stated that the goal is now to always maintain some inclusion of the Chinook Indian Nation, whose headquarters are located just across the river.
According to Jones, it’s a continuing cultural narrative. We have a lot more options.
For now, the public can see the Columbia River Maritime Museum s latest efforts: two exhibits that shine a light on a few of the Indigenous cultures that have long been absent from its story.
A Nuu-chal-nuth sealing canoe sits at the center of the Cedar and Sea, exhibit.Jamie Hale/The Oregonian
A variety of traditional carving tools are on display. Some are historic artifacts, but most are replicas.Jamie Hale/The Oregonian
A small side room shows the raw elements that are harvested for traditional crafts made by Native people along the Northwest coast.Jamie Hale/The Oregonian
CEDAR AND SEA
From the forest entryway to the display cases and the objects inside, the Western redcedar tree is omnipresent in Cedar and Sea.
Focused on the coastal areas where the Western redcedar grows, along the Pacific coast from Northern California to the southern arm of Alaska, the exhibit traces the plant s uses from harvest to finished product, showcasing Native artists who are using the tree in their traditional lifeways.
(While called cedar throughout the exhibit, a dendrologist would remind you that the Western redcedar is not a true cedar though that s how the tree is often called in the Pacific Northwest, where there are no native cedars.)
Besides the cases filled with objects, the museum has erected tall video screens that show footage and interviews of some of the main contributing artists a reminder that these traditional crafts are actively being done by living people in their communities.
Nathan Jackson, a Tlingit carver who is featured in the exhibit, said he s spent his career making poles, paddles, canoes and many other smaller objects in the traditional styles of his ancestors. The spirit of that work carries on, he said, even if the methods have changed.
At this point, there are many different tools you can be able to use and to be able to maintain the same characteristics of traditional work, Jackson said.
A bentwood box created by Tsimshian artist David Boxley is on display at the center of the exhibit.Jamie Hale/The Oregonian
Display cases in “Cedar and Sea” showcase new traditional works by Northwest Native artists.Jamie Hale/The Oregonian
Another featured artist, Suquamish basket maker Ed Carriere, contributed pieces to Cedar and Sea that were completely new to him. While he was adept in making clamming baskets, he was challenged to make a shrimp trap for the museum. He also made what he calls the archeology basket, which showcases several millennia of weaving techniques in one piece.
When you get into basketry you get into your ancestors how they lived, what they did in the wintertime, how they gathered the cedar limbs, the cedar bark, the root, Carriere said at the opening reception of the exhibit. By doing that all my life, I really can understand how my ancestors lived and what they did in their lives.
Jones said Cedar and Sea was about five years in the making. It replaces the museum s previous section on local Indigenous culture, which was a small piece of its larger exhibit on the maritime history of the lower Columbia River.
When creating the new exhibit, the museum wanted to get away from stereotypical past-tense portrayals of Native peoples, he said.
To us it was just something that would resonate more with our visitors, Jones said. It would do a disservice to any of the tribes to simply portray history with some artifacts that were collected by explorers in the 1700s and 1800s, and not show the contemporary voices.
Smith said his work as curator was to focus on living, breathing people, including contemporary artists and craftspeople. While a few genuine artifacts are found in the exhibit, the majority of the roughly 170 objects are new, he said either works by Native artists or historical replicas made by outside organizations.
This exhibit reaches back into the past and brings you right to the present day, Smith said.
ntsayka il i ukuk This is Our Place was created in collaboration with the Chinook Indian Nation and photographer Amiran White.Jamie Hale/The Oregonian
Skakwal, a 24-foot canoe, is on display at the center of the exhibit.Jamie Hale/The Oregonian
Photographs from Chinook Indian Nation highlight ceremonies alongside everyday life.Jamie Hale/The Oregonian
THIS IS OUR PLACE
On the other side of the wall from the entrance to Cedar and Sea is ntsayka il i ukuk This is Our Place, a small exhibit that focuses on the Chinook Indian Nation,a tribe that lives at the mouth of the Columbia River and has been fighting for federal recognition for decades.
In the exhibit, the community is showcased through a series of images by documentary photographer Amiran White, who relocated to Oregon from England and has spent the past decade working with the tribe.
Her work offers a broad window into the Chinookan community, showing a variety of traditional ceremonies as well as slices of everyday life.
There s a photo of a dugout canoe gliding across calm waters, its five paddlers in silhouette. Beside it, an image of an older and younger woman, perhaps mother and daughter, harvesting nettles from the forest. Down the wall is a picture of two girls sharing a bite of ice cream. Two spots down, there s a photo of a salmon ceremony.
In some images, the people are dressed in regalia, but in most they re in T-shirts and jeans, flannel shirts and rain boots. They show a community immersed both in classic Americana, like summer ice cream and high school graduation, as well as their traditional lifeways.
It echoes similar photographic exhibits on, say, theblack rodeoorIkoi no Kai, but for the Chinook tribe, ntsayka il i ukuk is a crucial distillation of its mission to secure a prosperous future for our descendants while honoring our ancestors, according to an exhibit placard.
White, who pulled the two dozen images from her vast collection taken over the years, said she has shared the tribe s goal of exposure an effort not just to gain federal recognition but a greater public recognition as well. She said she hopes that effort comes through for the people who visit the exhibit.
I m hoping that they realize and see that there is an Indigenous community right there on the land where they re at, White said. I hope that it gives them enough curiosity to find out more and maybe see what they can do to help, and to be good allies.
The Columbia River Maritime Museum is open 9:30 a.m.-5 p.m. daily; 1792 Marine Drive, Astoria; $18 for adults, $15 for seniors and students, $8 for kids.
–Jamie Halecovers travel and the outdoors and co-hosts thePeak Northwest podcast. Reach him at 503-294-4077,[email protected]@HaleJamesB.
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