Tribal Journey

by Gary Robinson

  “We’ll see how I feel about it when the time comes,” I replied.

  The next day the doctor took off my big thick cast and replaced it with a thinner, lighter one. Afterward, the nurse rolled a wheelchair into the room. With Mom’s help I got into it.

  “Let’s go home,” Mom said.

  “Let’s go home,” I said.

  Chapter 5

  Rolling Along

  There had been some changes made to the house. Workmen from the Chief Seattle Center had built a wheelchair ramp up to the front door.

  Mom pushed me up the ramp and into the house. It felt so good to be back there even though the memory of the night we left was still in the air. Mom had moved everything from my upstairs room down to her old bedroom so I could roll right in.

  The next day a Mrs. Anderson came from the hospital to talk to me. She told me that she was the hospital’s physical therapist.

  “What’s a physical therapist?” I asked.

  “I figure out a plan for your physical recovery,” she said. “I know exactly what body movements you need to start doing to help you get your strength back. And they will also help your muscles, joints, and bones heal.”

  “What’s the point? I’m never going to walk again. Or swim. I’ll forever be the kid in the wheelchair.”

  “That’s only true if you believe it to be true,” she said. “Your own belief in yourself can make a big difference in the outcome.”

  She explained how the physical therapy process worked. She also told me how long it might take to see results. It all sounded pretty pointless to me. I guess she was used to dealing with people like me. People who felt like giving up before they even started.

  “When your cast comes off, I’ll bring you a crutch to use,” she continued. “Your right leg is still good. You won’t have to spend all your time in a wheelchair.”

  “What a choice,” I said. “The crutch or the wheelchair.” She ignored my sarcasm.

  Before leaving, she told me, “We’ll start physical therapy next week, whether you want to or not. Your mother has already signed the forms.”

  Won’t that be fun, I thought.

  A few days later—I think it was the middle of May—Mom brought an older Native American man to see me. He kind of looked like someone I may have met a long time ago at one of the tribal culture classes I went to. He had brown wrinkly skin, two braids of grey hair, and a look on his face that made it seem like he knew a secret nobody else knew.

  Mom said, “Jason, I don’t know if you remember Mr. Franks. He’s come to visit you.”

  The man approached my bed and reached out his hand to shake. I didn’t move. Mom continued, “Mr. Franks is working with the tribal youth at the Duwamish Cultural Center, teaching them our language, songs, and dances.”

  “That’s nice,” I said. “Didn’t my mother tell you I wouldn’t be dancing ever again?”

  “Jason, don’t be rude!” Mom said firmly.

  Mr. Franks signaled Mom that it was all right. He pulled up a chair next to the bed and sat down facing me. Without saying a word, he reached out his hand again, this time palm up. He was inviting me to put my hand in his. I was curious, so I did.

  He put his other hand on top of mine and looked into my eyes for what seemed like forever. A song began to rise from somewhere inside him. First it was a humming. Then Indian words started forming. The sound was low and kind of calming. He closed his eyes and the song filled the room. In a few moments I closed my eyes, too.

  I must have fallen asleep or passed out, because in a few minutes I opened my eyes and saw that Mr. Franks was no longer in my room. The singing had stopped. I could hear him talking softly to Mom out in the living room.

  In a minute they both came back into my room.

  “What just happened?” I asked.

  Mr. Franks spoke to me for the first time. “Your soul has been very far away from your body. I called it to come back to be with you again. You should start feeling better about things now.”

  That sounded kind of crazy. I looked to Mom to see if I could tell what she thought about it.

  She said, “Mr. Franks and I think it would be good for you to start sitting in on the tribal culture classes. It would help for you to be around our people more and learn about that part of yourself again. It would be healing.”

  “Okay,” I said without thinking. Wait. Why did I say that? That’s not what I intended to say. What was going on with me?

  “See you next Saturday,” Mr. Franks said with a smile. He shook hands with me and my mother and left.

  The next day Mom rolled me and my wheelchair into the back of the minivan. She’d had some changes made so the wheelchair could easily fit in the side door. There were also clamps in the floor that held the chair. That way it wouldn’t roll around as she drove.

  She took me to the hospital so the doctor could take off my cast. Even with the cast off, there was no feeling in my left leg. It was dead. I had to pick it up with both hands to move it.

  As promised, Mrs. Anderson brought me a crutch made of aluminum. It was the kind that could be folded up when not being used. It could fit in the pocket on the back of the wheelchair. Whoopee-do. I was less than excited about it all.

  I started physical therapy sessions the very next day. Mrs. Anderson said I needed daily physical activity or my muscles would just quit working. She showed me how to do exercises at home that would make me stronger and improve my balance.

  What she wanted me to do was hard. But I was so bored I decided to give it a try. I thought I’d just go with the flow like before.

  By the time next Saturday came I was definitely having second—and third and fourth—thoughts about going to the tribal culture class. In fact, I wasn’t sure about it at all. But I had promised my mother, so I went.

  The Duwamish Longhouse sat across the street from the Duwamish River. They said that a long time ago the river was beautiful, with a natural shoreline. Now it was like a big open water pipe lined with cement borders and boat docks. Freight barges moved up and down the river carrying loads in and out of the factories and warehouses in the area.

  The Longhouse was near the only natural shoreline that was left. I had learned that this was part of the traditional Duwamish homeland. This was where Chief Seattle had lived. He was the man the city had been named after. So here his people had stayed.

  The language class had already started when I arrived. It was being held in a classroom on the second floor. The room was lined with windows that looked out on the river. A dozen or so teens sat on folding chairs in a circle around Mr. Franks. He was talking Indian to them. A few elderly women sat nearby listening.

  I’m glad I’d learned how to get around in my wheelchair on my own so Mom didn’t have to come in with me. How embarrassing would that have been?

  Mr. Franks paused when he saw me. “Jason, I’m glad you could make it. Come join the circle.”

  I wheeled over as a couple of the kids scooted sideways to make room for me.

  “Everyone, this is Jason,” Mr. Franks said. “Jason, this is everyone.” They all said “hi” or “hello” or something in the tribal language I didn’t understand.

  I listened to what was going on for a while, but it really didn’t catch my attention. Mr. Franks said the Salish people lived in villages up and down the coast of Washington. The language used by tribes in the area was called Lushootseed. I couldn’t even pronounce the name of the language, much less words from the language.

  He had everyone in the circle practice saying a few tribal words. We were to then use those words in a song he taught us.

  But all the while, I could hear noises coming from outside that sounded like a chain saw cutting into wood. When we took a break from the language lesson, I wheeled over to the windows and pulled myself up out of the chair. Leaning on the windowsill, I peered outside.

  Down below, across the street and closer to the river, a man was cutting into a huge cedar tree that lay on the g
round. He was shaping it into what I thought could only be a very large canoe. A couple of other younger men were helping him. They used some kind of tool that was shaped like an axe to hack away at the inside of the tree. It looked like they were trying to hollow it out.

  “What are they doing down there?” I asked Mr. Franks.

  “They’re carving a dugout canoe,” he said. “It will be used this summer to paddle up to a tribal community in Canada. It’s part of the yearly canoe journey that all the Coast Salish tribes take part in.”

  I continued to watch the men work on the massive tree. Something about it drew my attention. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. Mr. Franks must’ve noticed.

  “Jason, do you want to come back and join the circle now?” he asked. “Or would you rather go outside to watch them carve?”

  I was so focused on the canoe I guess I didn’t hear him. He knelt down beside my wheelchair and looked down at the carvers.

  “Jason, you’ve just given me an idea.” He turned back to the class. “We’re all going to go with Jason down to the canoe to continue our class. Who wants to help him with his chair?”

  Chapter 6

  Us and Them

  When we all got down to the carving site, Mr. Franks spoke privately to the carver for a few minutes. Then he turned to us.

  “This is Billy James. He’s a master carver who’s come down from Canada to carve a canoe that can go on the ocean. It will be used for our tribe so we can participate in the tribal canoe journey this year. He’s going to explain a little about what he’s doing. Then we can watch him work.”

  The carver told us that Native people of this area used red cedar trees that were more than three hundred years old to make canoes. He also explained about the traditional tools used for carving.

  “Today, carvers use chain saws and steel tools for creating canoes and totem poles. Our ancestors would’ve used those too if they’d been available.”

  He fired up the chain saw and finished shaping the front of the canoe. He roughed out a fairly sharp point that tilted upward. He said the front was called the bow.

  His two assistants moved back to the sides of the log. They began removing more wood from the inside center of the log with their hand tools. They chipped away at the cedar one little piece at a time. It looked like it would take a year to finish.

  As we watched them work, Mr. Franks said, “They’ll be finished with this canoe within a month.”

  A month? How was that possible?

  “Until it’s completed, we’ve borrowed another canoe to practice with,” he continued.

  “Practice what?” I asked.

  “Practice pulling, so we’ll be ready for the Tribal Journey in July,” one of the older kids said.

  “Pulling? What’s pulling?”

  “Paddling the canoe,” the boy answered. “But it’s called pulling because you pull the paddle through the water to make the canoe go forward.”

  “How come you guys know so much about this?” I asked.

  “Because we’re all part of the canoe family, and we’ll all be pulling this year,” another kid replied.

  “You have got to be joking,” I said in disbelief. “Your parents are going to let you paddle to Canada?”

  “That’s why we’re learning the language and the songs,” one of the girls in the class added. “It’s all part of learning the ancient canoe culture.”

  Billy James picked up one of the hand tools near the canoe. He brought it with him as he walked toward me. He held it out to me, and I took it from him.

  “This is called an adze,” he said.

  I looked at it closely. It had a flat, wide metal blade with a short wooden handle.

  “Traditionally, our carvers used ones made from stone,” he went on. “This one’s made of steel. If you’d like, you can come over and see how it feels to carve a canoe.”

  He couldn’t be serious, could he?

  “No thanks,” I said holding the adze out for him to take. “I really can’t do much of anything anymore.”

  “Mr. Franks said you could do almost anything if you really want to,” Billy replied. “But that’s all right. You think about it.” He left the tool with me. I felt the weight of the adze in my hands for a moment before putting it down.

  The next day I went to the physical therapy clinic to work with Mrs. Anderson. As in every session, she had me up out of my chair. I was holding on to two parallel bars as I struggled to sort of walk. It was more like a shuffle really. I wasn’t very good at it, but she said it was important for me to make the effort.

  “You must never give up,” she said.

  Next she showed me a new way to use my crutch to pull myself out of the wheelchair and onto a bed. She pointed out that this was one of the reasons I needed to be doing exercises. I had to build my upper body strength.

  I decided to tell her about my experience with the tribal culture class and the canoe carver’s offer.

  “Do you really think I could actually work on carving that canoe?” I asked.

  She thought for a moment.

  “It sounds like the ideal exercise to build your arm and shoulder muscles,” she said. “Especially if you switch off every fifteen minutes or so. Chop with the adze using your right arm for a while. Then turn around so you can chop with your left arm for a while.”

  And that’s what I did. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I worked with Mrs. Anderson. And on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, I worked with Billy carving the canoe.

  Billy taught me a lot about the canoes and the people who made them. The Duwamish tribe was one of many Salish tribes in the area who shared an ancient canoe culture. He said the water was their highway. They made several different kinds of canoes for different jobs.

  One day, when we had taken a break from carving, Billy looked at me and got all serious. He said, “Jason, this canoe is part of who you are. When we talk about what your ancestors did, it would be normal for you to say ‘we’ instead of ‘they,’ and ‘our’ instead of ‘their.’”

  I didn’t get what he was saying. He noticed my puzzled look.

  “The water was our highway, not their highway. We made different kinds of canoes for traveling and hauling and fishing. Do you understand the difference? You need to own this. You need to claim it. Then it will truly become a part of you and give you strength.”

  It was like a light turned on in my head. I got it. It meant I belonged here to these people. This was a part of my life. It meant I could no longer pretend I wasn’t Indian. And when I accepted that, a new feeling flooded into me. It was a feeling of pride. A feeling of ease.

  I began right then to accept myself for who I am. I stepped across the line between me and them and became part of the we.

  Chapter 7

  The Canoe Family

  That’s when the dream started. Every night for a week I’d see the same thing in my sleep.

  I was walking through a forest near a clear running stream. Tall, majestic cedar trees stood all around me. A woodpecker in one nearby tree was tap-tap-tapping on the tree’s trunk. He tapped so hard the tree fell over and landed in the stream. I walked over to look at the fallen tree.

  A large black bird, a raven, flew down and landed on the tree. That’s when he spoke to me. And that’s when I always woke up. But I never could remember what the raven said. Finally I told my mom about the dream. She said she’d speak to Mr. Franks about it.

  “Why Mr. Franks?” I asked.

  “Because he’s a wise man,” she said. “He knows about such things.”

  The following Saturday a large crowd of people of all ages gathered at the canoe. The class members were there, but I didn’t know the rest of them. Everyone seemed to know who I was though.

  “Who are all these people?” I asked Billy, who stood near the canoe.

  “The canoe family,” he answered. “You’ll find out in a minute what this is about. Stay up here with me.”

  Mr. Franks stepped up t
o the canoe’s bow. He began singing a prayer song. The crowd grew quiet. The song was similar to the one he sang the first day I met him.

  When he finished he said, “I’ve called this meeting of our canoe family for a couple of reasons. Billy, you go first.”

  “I’ve been watching for a sign that would tell me what name this canoe would go by,” Billy said. “You know, every Salish canoe has a spirit. That spirit speaks to those who create the canoe and use it. I’m happy to say we have the name.”

  Then Mr. Franks spoke again.

  “I want you all to meet Jason Morgan,” he said as he put a hand on my shoulder. “You’ve no doubt heard about him, his terrible accident, and the contribution he’s been making as a carver.”

  People in the crowd nodded. Some spoke a few words in their—our—native language.

  “Jason is the one who has given us the name for our canoe,” he added.

  No one was more shocked to hear that than me. What was he talking about?

  “Jason dreamed the dream given by the cedar tree spirit guide, the woodpecker,” he continued.

  “In his dream, the raven flew down and landed on the cedar tree. Thus the spirit of Raven gave his permission and his blessing on the canoe. So from this moment forward our canoe is the Raven Canoe. And we are the Raven Canoe Family. We’ll have a canoe-naming ceremony when the carving is complete.”

  I certainly wasn’t expecting this. They gathered around me and congratulated me.

  Everyone in the group raised their hands, palms up, moving them up and down. This was the traditional Salish gesture of thanks that I’d seen as a child.

  They were all so happy. I was surprised and happy too. I wasn’t sure what it all meant, but I realized it was still good to go with the flow.

  “And there’s more,” Mr. Franks said. We all quieted down. “I’ve spoken to Jason’s mother and his physical therapist.”

  Mr. Franks knew my physical therapist? How’d that happen? What’s been going on behind my back?

  “Jason, we are formally inviting you to join our Tribal Journey this year. We want you to pull with us next month when we paddle to the shores of the Cowichan people in Canada.”