Have I mentioned that it rains here? The sun hasn’t been out
since it got lost in the fog on Thursday. The locals tell me that it may find
it’s way out again sometime next Spring right after the worst of the storms and
wind provides enough repair work to keep folks busy for the summer.
On Friday I was successful in speaking with Porky and he was
at least somewhat successful in speaking a bit of Quileute with me. Porky will
be 86 in December and is well-known now for his failing memory. He’s a lively
old gentleman, as betrayed by a constant twitch in his legs, darting glances,
and a self-deprecating sense of humor. I was taken to see Porky by one of his
daughters, a woman in her 40’s, with four school-aged children who’s not shy
about sharing the challenges and despair of her life on the reservation. We met
after her weekly English class at the offices of the tribal council. Although
all of the students speak only English, the classes are given to help local
people improve their speaking and writing skills, and hopefully by extension,
their advancement prospects in their jobs. On the drive she told me that she
had lost a grown son to a car accident just this past year, that she’d grown up
in poverty, but never imagined she would live in poverty as an adult or not be
able to adequately provide for her children. She has a decent job that she’s
held long term, but recently came under a new, younger supervisor who’s lack of
positive encouragement causes her great stress. She was especially gloomy about
the prospects of any man ever having an interest in a woman her age with four
children and no money.
Her sister lives in “Quileute Heights”, a tidy two block
sub-division of small, boxy, nearly identical and similarly aging, cape-cod
style houses that sit on a hill behind the new and modern Akalat tribal center
which serves as a school to 26 teens and home to Indian basketball tournaments in it's nicely appointed gym. I met Porky at the next to last house on
the left on Ba-yak lane.
One of the key phrases showing up in my taping sessions so
far is “I can’t remember, because I’m so old now”. Porky was able to tell me at least a little bit about some
of the traditional Quileute stories – most of them seem to have been designed
to frighten the children for the sake of keeping them safe in a wilderness
area. Think Grimm’s Fairy tales. For example, the one that clearly had the
deepest lasting impact on Porky was about a witch who would steal children, put
pitch in their eyes to blind them and carry them away in the back-pack basket
normally used for carrying wood. He also commented that he doesn’t see her (the
witch) anymore now that he’s gotten so old. Or maybe because the village has
changed
Friday morning I visited with the high school students. We
talked about music, being a composer, life in New York, the world, travel, the
uniqueness of the Quileute language – you get the idea. It was a small group of
students (8 or 10). It wasn’t clear to me where the rest of the 26 were that
morning and I didn’t ask. However all of the students who were there expressed
the desire to go to college and
most were reasonably engaged in the conversation (ok – 2 fell asleep, but I
have to admit that I didn’t come prepared to entertain and I definitely don’t
hold it against them).
I spent much of the rest of Friday trying to discern whether
I was going to have any chance of meeting up with Charlotte and Leta – by all
accounts the two most fluent remaining speakers of the Quileute language. At
5:30, after several walks from one end of the rez to the other, a couple dozen
unanswered phone calls, a few discouraging conversations and the news that most
of the people I’d hoped to get help from were out of town for the weekend, I
left the tribal office feeling that it simply was not going to happen and
contemplating which day to head to Seattle.
As I came outside I met up with Tony, the Quileute fish and
game warden, and his wife Anne. I’d run into Tony several times over the course
of the day, but hadn’t actually been introduced yet. We joked a bit about the
lost-looking white guy who was following him around and I shared about my
efforts to find Charlotte and Leta. To which Anne replied in a quick, matter of
fact tone: “Oh, they’re down at the basket-weavers conference in Quinault. I
think my dad’s going down there tomorrow…”
Ohhhh-kay – from there on out the conversation was a flurry
of phone numbers, trying to keep nicknames and familial relationships straight
(hopeless task), and advice on how to know when Jiggs (Anne’s father) was
pulling your leg or not. Anne seems to have the phone number of every tribal
member memorized, so I was left scrambling for my notepad and a pen that works.
In the end, I managed to reach Jiggs and arrange a ride with his daughter and
grandson to finally go see Charlotte and Leta.
Saturday morning I piled in the car, made all the
introductions and promptly fell asleep for the entire two hour ride. If you’ve
read my earlier entries, you know that insomnia is sometimes an issue for me –
and so far on this trip I’ve been going to sleep on local time and waking up on
New York time, which has brought me down to about four hours of sleep per
night. It seems that all I needed was a fast moving car in dicey weather on a
treacherous road, but I was sorry to miss the towns along the way, with
colorful names such as Queets and Humptulip.
The Northwest Native American Indian Basket Weavers annual
gathering was held this year at the Quinault reservation casino. It’s a very
new facility with a large open conference room (home to the gathering), a
gaming room of equal size filled with row upon row of slots and a line of craps
and black-jack tables down the center, a snack bar, an upscale restaurant, a
small sports bar and a much smaller sushi bar. I can say with great certainty
that I’ll never understand the lure of a casino.
Charlotte and Leta were at a table somewhere among the maze of hundreds of
basket weavers, all seated at round banquet tables working their hands and
fingers through cedar strips and bear grass and raffia and many other materials
that I couldn’t identify and don’t remember the names of. Leta Shale was one of
the “featured weavers”. Her baskets are highly crafted, uniquely designed and
prized by collectors. Leta is 80 years old, but seems much younger. She has
black curly hair and large, powerful, black rimmed glasses and a razor sharp
wit. When I met her, she immediately informed me that her rate for such
services is $1500 per hour. Naturally, if I needed to take pictures the price
would go up significantly - modeling is extra. And if I wanted her in a
bathing suit that would require some further negotiations. She always wears a
bikini.
Charlotte Kalama was the “Honorary Weaver” for the
conference. She is among the most highly recognized basket weavers of the
Northwest. Her baskets are brilliant and colorful. Her designs are both
traditional and innovative. Her baskets are part of the collections of museums
across the US and in Europe. Who knew? (not me).
Charlotte is 86 years old. Although she’s still mobile, she
has arthritis that tends to keep her from
weaving anymore and causes her to use a wheelchair much of the time.
Charlotte is a tiny, dear woman, just a bit over 4 feet tall, but clearly never
to be taken lightly. A riveter at the Seattle shipyards during WWII, Charlotte
learned both basket weaving and the Quileute language from her grandmother when
she was a little girl. Both Charlotte and Leta are devout Shakers and both have
been ministers and leaders of the Shaker church in their communities.
The big discovery I made as I spent the majority of the day
with these two very lovely ladies was that there are no remaining Quileute
speakers who are truly fluent in the language. Each of the people who I’ve
spoken to are facile with those portions of the language that they still use
(Leta did teach me a few words and insisted that I pronounced them all badly),
but none of them is able to converse freely in Quileute, even on familiar
subjects. That said, I was very honored to spend time with Charlotte and Leta
and was pleased with the recordings I was able to capture: Charlotte praying in
Quileute, Leta singing her Quaker hymns while she prepared strips of cedar bark
for weaving.
My time with the Quileute is nearing it’s end. On Sunday
I’ll meet again with Porky to see if he can remember all the words to the
Quileute “drunk” song and tell me a bit more about his life. On Monday morning
I’ll spend more time at the school sorting through their archive of audio
recordings. Monday afternoon I head back to Seattle.
Side note for all the Twilight fans who’ve been bored reading
about my language project – I’ve asked around a bit about the location of Jacob
Black’s house in hopes of learning more about their family, but have been told
that “it isn’t wise to go poking
around about such things”. I’ve never been one to care too much about what’s
wise and what’s not though………
Here's Porky on a smoking break following a rousing rendition of the Quileute drunk song.
Here are the ever-charming Charlotte and Leta sharing a laugh, almost certainly at my expense.
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