“You see your culture coming out of the ground like a power”:
Uncanny Encounters in Time and Space on the Northwest Coast
Colleen E. Boyd, Ph.D.
Ball State University
106th Meeting of the American Anthropological Association
Washington, DC
30 November 2007
ABSTRACT The stunning natural beauty of the Olympic Peninsula draws millions of
tourists from around the world each year. It would seem that the region possesses the
necessary components for a successful eco-tourist economy: marine and terrestrial wild
life, “pristine” glacial peaks, scenic coast line, quaint seaside towns and diverse
indigenous cultures. However when a state and municipal waterfront development project
in Port Angeles, WA unearthed a 2,500-year old Coast Salish village and burial ground,
claimed by the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe as an ancestral site, social and cultural
divisions within the region – ever present if not just below the surface – threatened to
erupt. This paper examines how Native categories for defining land and objects as sacred
conflicted with those of other – and equally passionate – user groups. Multicultural
divisions and uncanny back stories emerged in the wake of the “discovery.” Clearly, such
conflicts over how best to re-develop the Olympic Peninsula’s struggling post-timber
economies are at the heart of community discord. Diverse and contentious user groups
clash over whose heritage truly defines the region and ultimately possesses the authority
to define, interpret and preserve the “sacred” lands and cultural resources framing the
memories and histories that haunt the region.
Places are repositories for complex emotions that are linked through personal
experiences and cultural memories or “place-stories” to the past (Thrush 2007; Casey
1996). The details that describe a specific place may be woven together in a seamless
story or, more often appear fragmented, conflicted and in disarray. This is especially true
in the Pacific Northwest where the past generally will not stay buried and at any rate does
not lend itself to unassailable accounts of what has transpired. The emotive power of
places is never more apparent than when the dead are disturbed. For the most part when
human remains are disinterred in this part of the world, they are linked to indigenous
cultures and communities. When human remains are disinterred in the Pacific Northwest,
they are often linked to indigenous cultures and communities. Resulting conflicts are
stereotypically framed as unequal contests between “tradition” and “progress” with
Native peoples fighting oppression by clinging stubbornly to an ancestral past. While
non-natives champion development, make the hard choices and promote economic and
scientific progress in the face of what are viewed as quixotic minority claims to
underutilized objects and spaces and long-dead history.
In 2003 the City of Port Angeles, WA won a state bid to build a new graving yard - a
site for maritime construction and repair. Shortly after the project began, construction
workers digging along the city waterfront unearthed human remains. The remains were
linked to the Klallam village of Tse-whit-zen, built near the base of Ediz Hook, the
second largest sand spit in the world, some 2500 years ago. a sand spit. This paper will
examine the public drama that unfolded as a result of the accidental “discovery” of a site
well-documented by tribal elders and the conflicts that ensued about how best to re-
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develop – and rehabilitate – the Olympic Peninsula’s post-timber identity. Ultimately the
Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe evoked federal law and the graving yard project was
relocated to Tacoma, WA. State, county and municipal leaders, developers and private
citizens were outraged that a project promising jobs and revitalization could be scrapped
in deference to tribal cultural rights and demands.
It would seem the Olympic Peninsula possesses all the necessary components for
a strong eco-tourist economy: temperate rain forests, exotic wild life, towering glacial
peaks, remote beaches, quaint coastal communities with Starbucks and clam chowder on
tap and colorful indigenous cultures. With the collapse of the natural resources industries
in the Pacific Northwest, communities are under pressure to develop economic
opportunities for residents. As the gateway to the Pacific Ocean, the inland waterways of
the Puget Sound and the Olympic National Park, tourism is a viable alternative for the
Olympic Peninsula, although most jobs are low paying and seasonal and at any rate have
not truly replaced the family wages once earned by loggers, mill workers and commercial
fishermen. Thus the graving yard seemed like a viable solution as it promised family
wages in an industry with a future. When the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe halted
construction on the project, tempers flared and old wounds ruptured.
Diverse user groups on the Olympic Peninsula often divide over land use, natural
and cultural resources and development questions. How the region will represent itself to
the millions of tourists who visit each year is, as Michael Harkin notes in a different
context, “a dialogic process involving both locals and outsiders, indigenous peoples and
agents of globalization” (Harkin 2003: 577). A rare archaeological find could potentially
draw tourists to the region but who would benefit from this? When the decision was
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made to excavate the site and disinter the remains, tribal members were hired to work as
archaeological technicians and provide security for the site. Soon after, some Native
workers experienced odd occurrences, which they attributed to the disturbance of
ancestral graves. For Klallam people, the unearthing of their ancestors mainly brought
intense grief and trauma. Marketing their culture was not a primary concern.
When the decision was made to excavate the site and disinter the remains, tribal
members were hired to work as archaeological technicians and provide security for the
site. It quickly became clear that the Tse-whit-zen village site was probably one of the
most significant archaeological sites found in Western Washington to date. Eventually
the State of Washington decided to relocate the graving yard project to Tacoma, WA and
Port Angeles lost its bid for the new development. Meanwhile, Native employees began
working along side contract archaeologists hired to supervise the dig and ensure proper
scientific protocols were followed. Shortly after work began, some Native workers began
to experience uncanny encounters and strange feelings, which they attributed to the
disturbance of ancestral graves.
Spirits haunt residents of the contemporary Lower Elwha Klallam community, not
as the tattered remnants of primordial “tradition,” but rather as powerful signifiers that
depict contemporary indigenous relationships to places and postcolonial modernity.
Western rationalism posits ghosts do not exist, yet spirits provide uncanny explanations
for indigenous experiences. Derrida reminds us that “hegemony still organizes the
repression and thus the confirmation of a haunting. [Indeed], haunting belongs to the
structure of every hegemony” (1994: 37). Here I argue for a greater awareness of what
haunts the oft-silenced boundaries between ‘story’ and ‘history’ for tribal citizens of
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Lower Elwha. Recent scholarship examines how hauntings intersect with memory,
identity and communal historical consciousness, (Richardson 2003; Bergland 2000;
Holland 2000; Brogan 1998; Gordon 1997: 21) and provide greater dimension to unseen,
unvoiced and marginalized emotions, experiences and imaginings that nonetheless
contribute to the ‘realness’ of social life. Tales of ghostly encounters told by Klallam
people cross boundaries of space, time and culture, and along the way, create historical
breadth and depth from memories. They are alternatives for laying claim to place and the
past.
Haunting, Avery Gordon notes, ‘is a constituent element of modern social life. It
is neither pre-modern superstition nor individual psychosis; it is a … social phenomenon
of great import” (1997: 7). Like magic and witchcraft, cultural haunting critiques
modernity and at the same time ‘belongs’ to it (Pels 2003: 5). In the 1930s, a
Twana/Klallam elder named Frank Allen told the young anthropologist William
Elmendorf that an Indian doctor had revealed to him how ghosts dwelling in the land of
the dead, “got automobiles now, stores now, just like we have here” (Elmendorf 1993:
227). With this statement, Allen challenged modernity’s power to banish ancestral ghosts
by demonstrating the uncanny ability of spirits to embrace selected aspects of modernity
and therefore survive – a fact that parallels the resilience of living Native people as they
too resist, survive and transform. “Embracing the subjectivity of death,” Sharon Patricia
Holland argues, enables oppressed peoples to speak from “familiar sites” about that
which has been unspoken or left for dead (2000: 4-5).
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“They never say it is a sacred site to the Klallam people”: Traditions of Belief and Disbelief
In his provocative article, Traditions of Disbelief, David Hufford questions why it
is “most” academics view “supernatural beliefs” as arising from “various kinds of
obvious error” (Hufford 1982: 47). In other words, he states, “What I know, I know, what
you know you only believe” (Ibid). Hufford speaks directly to what is at issue here. As
anthropologists and scientists, we who are trained in the Western “tradition of disbelief”
to dismiss automatically as false any claims that cannot be proven through observable
facts. In August 2005, at a healing ceremony held at the Tse-whit-zen village site, a
visitor from the Tulalip Tribes echoed Hufford’s sentiment:
Sometimes people do not recognize what is dear to us
They never say it is a sacred site to the Klallam people
They say ‘the Klallam people believe it is a sacred site’
– not that it just is1.
When issues pertaining to land development, tourism and environmental, historic or
cultural preservation cut across political, social and economic boundaries, Natives and
non-natives may view what is at stake in very different ways – each from their traditions
of belief or disbelief. The Olympic Peninsula is a region well-loved by weekenders from
Seattle and out-of-state tourists alike for its craggy peaks, thick rain forests and glacial
salmon streams. Latte-sipping Seattleites are a strong lobby for certain kinds of
development or lack of it. One only has to read the vitriol responses left at newspaper
websites when the subjects of tribal hunting or fishing rights come up to understand how
quickly the tide of public opinion can turn against Northwest Native peoples. Thus
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whether they are fighting to protect sacred sites or exercising fishing and hunting rights,
and despite their own cultural beliefs and sovereign authority, indigenous people still
must strive to be heard amid a cacophony of voices clamoring for their senses of space,
order and the past to be privileged. Everyone has different stakes in such contentious
debates.
More than a decade ago, Haitian scholar Michel-Rolph Trouillot argued that
“history has many hearths” (1995: 20). In other words, we are each in our own fashion
historians, narrators of the past. Whose version of historical events will triumph is
dependent on numerous factors. Yet Trouillot cautions us to be aware of silence in
history – its causes and reasons for existing – including those relationships of inequality
that serve to reproduce in the present the “legacies of past horrors” like slavery and
colonialism. “Only in the present,” he states, “can we be true or false to the past we
choose to acknowledge” (1995: 151). In this regard, stories of spirits disturbed by
legacies of the past and actions taken in the present are a variety of historical narrative
that Klallam people are actively weaving together. Others can choose to listen to or
ignore. How far will policy makers, scientists, developers or civic leaders go to
acknowledge and engage tribal assertions that the land is actually and not just
metaphorically “haunted”?
Cultural Haunting in the Coast Salish Present
My own interests in the interplay of spirits, the environment, development and the
past began when I heard a story about hauntings associated with the recently unearthed
Klallam village and burial site after tribal members with whom I work at Lower Elwha
secured employment as a archaeological technicians. One particular story inspired me to
conduct summer fieldwork in 2005 when the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe would be
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hosting the annual Tribal Journeys canoe festival. At that time it quickly became evident
that for many people that summer, the subjects of the environment and land development,
spirits and the ancient village site were thoroughly entwined. In 2005 the Lower Elwha
Klallam Tribe hosted the annual Tribal Journeys canoe festival – an event that has gone
on for the last 20 years and that involves Native peoples in the U.S. and Canada from as
far away as the Aleutian Islands. As the host community, Lower Elwha provided shower
facilities and space for canoe “families” to camp and served meals to visitors over a fiveday period. Each evening people gathered in a large tent for singing, dancing and
giveaways. The Elwha Klallam selected as the theme of their tribal journey event
“Reflections of Our Past: Tse-whit-zen Village” – a commemoration meant to draw
attention to the village site dig, which had between its discovery in 2003 and the Tribal
Journeys event in 2005 become a hotly contested political and cultural issue. Tribal
Journeys thus became a forum not just for celebrating the vibrancy of Northwest canoe
culture but an opportunity as well to engage people near and far in a debate about land
use, cultural resource management and the past. It was clear that the people of Lower
Elwha were seeking – and finding – allies from among the thousands of Northwest Coast
villagers invited for the festivities.
There is nothing new about conflicts between state and tribal governments,
particularly in the Pacific Northwest that has – until recently – often been characterized
as a conflicted land of plenty. Since treaty times there have been on-going conflicts
between state and tribal governments over control of the region’s natural and cultural
resources. As the Olympic Peninsula transitions from an extractive economy to a service
and preservation-based economy, non-native residents are genuinely frustrated over more
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job losses. In turn, tribal citizens respond by referring to the graving site turned
archaeological dig as an “open grave”1 out of sincere and desperate fear over the
consequences of irrevocable actions and the further erosion of endangered cultural and
natural resources. In both cases each only scratches the surface of what is at stake for the
entire community – Natives and non-natives alike. Who truly defines the character of the
region? Whose losses are more heartbreaking? Who is the most marginalized? Can the
wounds ruptured by excavations ever be sutured? Is there room on the Olympic Peninsula
for true cultural diversity?
It is my desire here to affirm that stories of spirits anchor and authenticate the past
for Elwha Klallam people in time and space in ways that archival records or
archaeological reports do not – a point Jill Grady has substantiated in her work with the
Stillaguamish Tribe, another Coast Salish nation in the Northwest (Grady 2004). This is
not to argue that tribal citizens have no use for documents or artifacts - that is certainly
not the case. However, leaving open the possibility of other kinds of links to the past or
interpretations including personal narratives of the sort I have collected here enables one
to consider more carefully how cultural actors maintain boundaries in order to reproduce
their unique cultures in a multicultural world. Native peoples ought to play a central and
critical role in controlling the means and modes of historical production and in
interpreting the multiple meanings and significance of archaeological and historical
evidence from the past. The question remains – who will – or should be – listening?
Numerous scholars are now engaging what Andrew Weinstock calls “Spectrality
Studies” within literary criticism (Weinstock 2004; Richardson 2003; Bergland 2000;
Brogan 1998), Geography and architecture (Vidler 1999; Tuan 1979); through
1
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In Peninsula Daily News, 01.19.05
examination of the relationship between performance, memory and the past (Holland
2000; Roach 1996) and in postcolonial interpretations of folklore and history (Simmons
1986; Ivy 1995; Trouillot 1995; Nabakov 2002: 146-148). Peter Nabakov argues that the
ancestral remains of indigenous peoples possess inordinate power to mobilize politics and
emotions while “Indian history continues to hinder and haunt the doctrine of progress by
placing human remains in its path” (1999: 148). The “contours and boundaries” of space
as “sites of struggle” in contemporary discourse “are called upon to stand in for contested
realms” of national and ethnic identities (Vidler 1999: 167).
Cultural and Ecological Tourism on the Olympic Peninsula
Nineteenth century entrepreneurs were quick to exploit the natural setting and
abundance of the Olympic Peninsula. By the late Victorian period, developers had
erected rustic lodges and hotels supplied with “guns and dogs” so tourists could pursue
healthful outdoor activities like hunting and fishing (The Model Commonwealth 14
January 1889) or recuperate in the “miraculous curative” waters of local natural hot
springs (Hult 1954:187; The Olympic-Leader 1915). In 1915 50,000 young rainbow
trout, hatched through the burgeoning technology of new state fish hatcheries, were
planted by the game warden in nearby Lake Sutherland to the delight of anglers. By 1919
the Port Angeles Olympic-Leader enthusiastically reported about “the Olympic Way –
Clallam County’s Pride and the Most Scenic Road in the State” where motorists and even
bicyclists enjoyed a road “smooth as glass, winding in and out, and out and in, about the
hills and mountains.” The road carried travelers not only across space but also through
time – from the cottages built by captains of industry that lined local lake shores, through
the millions of board feet of timber waiting to feed the Pacific Northwest’s commercial
industries and finally to the “edge of Quillayute prairie” where the highway ended and
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there was no road or bridge to the beach “but a novel trip is afforded by the Indians who
take visitors down [the river] in canoes.”
Thus indigenous peoples, within certain frameworks, were a part of the market
appeal of local “natural” attractions. Throughout the Victorian period until WWI, whites
confronted two opposing views of Native peoples: as anachronisms, which led to their
greater appeal as romantic and haunting remnants of the region’s natural and human
histories, and, as a normal part of every day life. After all it was Native people that sold
fresh caught seafood door to door, guided weekend anglers on their fishing trips,
performed menial tasks for pay, worked in local mills, timber camps and canneries and
ferried whites around in canoes when roads were impassable or non-existent. Local
newspapers at the turn-of-the-century frequently reported everyday news that included
Natives. For example in 1889 the paper remarked “the Elwah [sic] Indians are bringing
some very fine salmon to town, speared in that river” and that “the Indians predict snow
during the latter part of February” (The Model Commonwealth 25 January 1889).
On July 4, 1889, nine Klallam men challenged town residents to a “match game
of baseball” –their first game ever. Later that day, “Hoopeye Charlie,” a local Klallam
youth, won a high jump contest. In the evening after shows of pyrotechnics, townspeople
were invited to the Klallam village at Ennis Creek where they witnessed “the making of
an [Indian] doctor.” “In all the day was very “pleasant to all the parties concerned there
being very little to mar the harmony of the proceedings” (The Model Commonwealth 5
July 1889).
Such examples of cross-cultural entertainments were replaced over time by less
open sorts of interactions. After settlers made permanent homes, their basic survival no
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longer depended on the help of Indian neighbors. By WWI, fewer stories about Natives
appeared in the pages of local papers at all. When they did, they served to promote
colonial hegemony, co-opt the Olympic Peninsula’s cultural heritage and further disrupt
indigenous claims to the region and the past. In July 1915, for example, the Order of the
Elks hosted a 3-day circus in which Native-inspired stories and traditions were re-cast as
side show attractions like the “Wild Man of the Hoh River” and “Chief Kalotha” – an
alleged petrified Klallam chief unearthed by sewer diggers in Port Angeles in a back alley
and placed on display to frighten and astound circus attendees (Boyd 2001: 245).
Throughout the 3-day event, which drew local residents and tourists, Indians were
repeatedly associated with the past and whites with the future of the region. It is no
surprise that when asked to participate in an Indian Day Parade on the first day of the
circus, few Indians chose to actually do so. L. J. Leonard traveled to the west end of the
Olympic Peninsula and spent three days making arrangements with “Chief Chestoka of
Neah Bay and Chief Joe Pollen [sic] at Quillayute.” Although the two leaders had agreed
to “bring an astounding display of baskets, totems, mats, rugs, spears, bows and arrows,
toys, seal skins and other articles of workmanship,” the July 1st Indian Parade was not
well represented by Indians (Olympic-Leader 26 June and 9 July 1915).
In the 21st century popular culture “still locates Indians and modernity at opposite
ends of the nation’s historical trajectory” (Thrush 2007: 11). What lies between these
extremes is a kind of spectral identity that replaces, at least for many non-natives, the
reality of indigenous people’s lived experiences. Thus development of tourism in places
like the Olympic Peninsula continues to promote romantic and even haunting images of
Native peoples in the past. On the City of Port Angeles’s public wharf, an artist was
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commissioned to paint a mural depicting local history to educate the many tourists that
visit each year. The first panel, which depicts a nearby Klallam village in the late 18th
century, used living tribal members as models – a kind of reverse spectralization where
contemporary Native peoples are seen haunting their own ancestral past. Meanwhile the
reality of indigenous people living complex lives: seeking employment, granting
interviews to the media, staging political protests, exercising their rights to fish, hunt or
gather and excavating archaeological sites are at odds with the identity civic leaders and
developers want to project about the Olympic Peninsula as a kind of timeless
environmental wonderland. These real-life Native peoples will not be contained any more
than their stories about ghosts and spirits.
The stories I analyze here exemplify how the Olympic Peninsula as a physical
space is called upon to mark the “contested realms of identity” and that ancestral remains,
located in places defined as sacred and historic, mobilize political action, alter the
trajectory of economic development and resist the forgetting of indigenous points of
view.
“You see your culture coming out of the ground like a power”: Cultural Haunting in a Coast Salish Community
Over 100 Native peoples, most from the Lower Elwha, worked at the Tse-whitzen village site during the first fifteen-month period the dig was underway. Employees
received on-the-job training from the contract field archaeologists hired to supervise the
site. Employees received additional instructions from tribal elders to wash with
snowberry water before entering and leaving the site and to smear dabs of tumas2 near
their eyes as protection against spirits. They also participated in regular prayer circles.
Sometimes, non-native archaeologists joined them. areas.
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The remains Mark found that day were male. “[I’ve been a] fisherman all my
life,” he explained, “this guy I found had hooks and harpoons buried with him.” Mark’s
own status as a fisherman caused him to identify strongly with the decedent. The kinds of
objects found in association with this individual indicated he was highly respected for
what he did, as Mark himself is respected within the community for his subsistence skills.
Mark did not choose to share with anyone immediately about the knocking sound or how
he came to dig on that spot. He feared ridicule so he didn’t tell anyone for several months
about the specific nature of his experiences – although he reminded himself and others
about the real people - now deceased- who were his relations. “People just told me that
I’m blessed to be doing what [we] are doing … [when] we uncovered a longhouse in that
same [area]. I told the archaeologists we are standing in my ancestor’s longhouse.”
At the time I met with him in 2005, Mark was conflicted and felt there was no
simple way to explain what he experienced. He knew that his tangible experiences of
spirits set him apart from other people, particularly the scientists working on the dig. That
did not prevent him from accepting his experiences as “real.” Like many of the Native
people associated with the dig, uncanny encounters are a part of real life. They may be
odd or even frightening but few dispute that spirits exist and have agency to influence the
living. For the last several months Mark has continued to work on the project and is more
confident now that it has been a good experience. He calls it “awesome” and a “blessing”
– especially he is grateful for all he has learned.
Besides Mark, other people shared uncanny experiences and feelings about the
site. A young mother who was pregnant had been instructed to avoid the dig because she
was in a sacred state and it could be “dangerous” for her and the baby (LEKT P.C.
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08.02.05). Another woman explained that her boyfriend’s house had to be “brushed out”
with cedar boughs after a sibling working on the site carelessly brought spirits home from
the dig (LEKT P.C. 08.04.05).
Other community members felt agitated about the site and bothered by spirits.
One woman hired to dig and screen artifacts, also was available throughout the work day
to smudge workers who felt uncomfortable for any reason. She described for me the
terrible nightmares about death she endured prior to joining the crew. Eventually the
nightmares compelled her to visit a family allotment site on a quiet beach where she
stayed all day until she found five sacred items: eagle fluffs, olive shells and other things.
It took all day to find these things and when she was done, she was protected and the
nightmares stopped. This woman is a mother and believes that is why she found so many
remains of children while working at the site. Besides the nightmares, she has not
suffered any ill-effects from working at the dig. She has been asked to help other
individuals who did not follow instructions for brushing off spirits when leaving the site
and were subsequently plagued with ghosts in their homes (LEKT P.C. 08.05.05).
During the excavation, the entire community gathered with relations from
Vancouver Island for a ceremonial “burning” of food and clothing – offerings to appease
the ancestors. Each person who participated was someone with direct ancestral ties to the
village. At the healing ceremony in 2005 parents were instructed to check their children’s
clothing and make sure no one had accidentally put a shell or rock or sand from the site in
their pockets. We were all instructed to leave everything in place at the site. Objects, even
sand and dirt, in close proximity to human remains were unsafe to carry away.
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Many frustrated townspeople in Port Angeles were less than empathetic regarding
the trauma Native people sustained as a result of the dig and expressed publicly. This was
revealed in various ways: “private” emails from city council members were made public
voicing “concerns” that the tribe was “taking over.” Others called for the re-examination
of treaty rights. “Stop Grieving and Start Graving” one sign boldly proclaimed. Clearly,
like contemporary fishing rights and whale hunts, cultural sites significant to local tribes,
no matter how scientifically “worthy” they may be, are cited as reasons to oppose and
mobilize against assertions of tribal cultural and political sovereignty at the local level.
There has been a satisfying conclusion to the protracted affair – at least for the citizens of
Lower Elwha. In early October 2007, the Tribal government settled lawsuits against several
private and governmental parties. The State of Washington spent $87 million dollars on the
graving yard, which was never used as such and eventually rebuilt elsewhere. The community,
including Lower Elwha, lost over 100 family wage jobs. In return the site will be designated a
historic cemetery and the Tribe will re-bury the 337 complete burials excavated from the site,
over a two-year period. Some of the artifacts, now being stored at the University of Washington
in Seattle will become part of a curation and interpretive facility to be built on a section of the site
where there are no burials or artifacts so the can “keep on educating and sharing the culture of the
Lower Elwha Klallam”2
Conclusion
The dichotomy of good versus evil – Eden or Hell – was typical of 19th century
settlers when envisioning their new homes in the so-called “wilderness” of the West. For
the Klallam, this was not a wild or un-marked land. Everything required to nourish
bodies, minds and souls and reproduce new generations was available while knowledge
Frances Charles, Tribal Chair, LEKT, “Lower Elwha Settle Lawsuits over Graving Yard and Tse-whitzen Village.” Peninsula Daily News, 7 October 2007.
Mark Charles, Personal Communication, 19 October 2007.
2
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preserved and transformed the landscape through cultural practices, stories and language.
This is not a land that time forgot and the Native peoples – who are still transforming it –
are not vanishing impediments to progress. As much as anyone else, they are born to –
and for – the contemporary world.
At the healing ceremony held on August 2, 2005 during the Tribal Journeys canoe
festival, about 250 people gathered at the Tse-whit-zen site. One hereditary chief from
Canada stated:
We are not alone today
Your beaches are full of all the ancestors
Who have come from different places
Another from the Esquimault reserve on Vancouver Island stated:
It is truly a testimony to Indian people that we are caring for the land, the water
You can’t give up because things are standing in your way
The old people want you to be together
It was the old people who pulled you together
You see your culture coming out of the ground like a power.
Eloquent words shape a community’s belief in the power of place to inspire
change or discourage it. Klallam people witnessed firsthand their culture coming out of
the ground. The traumatic unearthing of their ancestors empowered them to act. Klallam
people maintain that the power of such spirits protects them and their unique way of life
or, out of anger and betrayal, spirits may lash out. Regardless, the figure of the ancestral
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ghost enables a sense of self in place. The graving yard project promised to bring jobs
and prosperity to a beleaguered town that does not have enough of either. While the
discovery of graves postponed this economic recovery plan, it also reminded everyone
that the future of the town, for better or worse, is linked to its past; and Klallam people
belong not only to the past, but to the present and future of the Olympic Peninsula. Their
“memoryscapes” – that is their “sensual and mental apprehension of their environment
[and its] remembered places” cast long shadows in spaces that resist modernity’s
assumption that power is only linked to the ability to see clearly in every corner. From
shadowy and unseen places the dead “speak” through the embodied experience of
cultural haunting.
1
This brief speech was delivered by an elder from the Tulalip Tribes during the Healing Ceremony
held 2 August 2005 at the Tse-whit-zen site (Boyd 2005 Unpublished Field Notes).
2
Red Ochre is a naturally red-tinted clay used as pigment the world over.
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