By Joseph Riippi
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In the distance a canoe is paddled by seven strong men. It progresses slowly through the chunky green waves. In more distance the whale has breached. A geyser of white shoots in the air. A whale is there, living, breathing, swimming, paddling.
The men in the canoe are quasi-hunters, basketball players and pottery makers portraying long-lost warriors of their tribal ancestry.
Helicopters with TV cameras; protestors with signs and cameras; the fishing boat alongside the canoe. There is a rifle, and a steel harpoon, the past and present juxtaposed across laps of paddling men. Lives intersect with other lives as living men paddle through the timeless, cold sea.
When ancestors killed whales to live.
This image in the lens of David Elliott: the photographer. He steps slowly across the bow of the Coast Guard cutter. The waves are green and thick; mists of salt surround him with each fall and rise of the ship�s bow. A giant of a man with long hair and no life preserver and a camera round his thick neck. He smells the sea�s salty breath. Salt stuck to his navy blue sweater. Hair in his face, he grasps the handrail making his way to the front of the boat, toward the other men, the men in orange looking through binoculars. The cutter rocks in thick ocean waves. The sky is a greyish white. It is 48 degrees Fahrenheit. The water is cold and stings like salted needles when it comes over the bow in the sprays. Neah Bay, Washington State, 1999.
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They call themselves qwu-dich-cha-at which means �The People who live near the Rocks and Seagulls.� The men bearing a treaty in 1855 will call them the Makah and no one knows where this name comes from. The name will sequester them to the tip of the Olympic Peninsula in what will become Washington State in 1889. The tribe will slowly drown in number, thrashing to keep traditions on their lips while swallowing water towards extinction.
Before the treaty, the happy life for the people who lived near the rocks and seagulls was the one that ended in the same bed in which they were born.
Life would begin with a scream. Life would end with the telling of a story.
*
You are pointing to Raven on the totem pole, telling culture stories, creation stories, family stories. Telling of Raven giving us the sun; telling how Raven stole the box from the big chief who kept it only for himself, and how he threw the sun up into the sky, and how Raven flies all night across the black sky with the moon, waiting for the sun. A happy moment to watch your daughter�s eyes when you tell it.
�Raven,� you say, pointing to the carving of a bird at the top of the totem pole, �gave light and beauty and love to the world. Without Raven we would be cast in darkness, there would be no light for us to see the beauty of the ocean, and no beauty for us to love. Raven gave us the power to see the world as beautiful. To see the whales, the sky, the sun and moon and stars. Raven gave me the ability to love you, my beautiful daughter.� And she laughs, your daughter. She laughs and touches your bare arm.
It is the happiest moment.
Your daughter looks, she sees the moon, the stars, their beautiful jagged reflections in the ocean; she understands. The world begins to makes sense to her. The lesson is, Someone must suffer for love to be possible.
The memories spill in a torrent. Your own mother, her mother, the versions of the story told by all the relatives.
And you think; Our stories are like the water passing beneath a canoe � always the same, yet always changing with each paddling hand. We each make our impression on the ocean of life around us. Each step we take pushes time away like water, everyone just trying to make it to shore.
*Raven swims through black sky, looking down, shining the moon in his beak to see the man. The man, the photographer, thick as a tree trunk, rows the small rowboat (wooden, borrowed) with ferocious heaving strokes that conjure paintings of storms. The moonlight shatters like glass on the waves around him. He slows. He paddles an oar at a time, one in each huge hand, and in this way directs himself as he gets closer to shore. He can see the green light of the Coastguard cutter in the distance, fading away as he beats on against the current with each lurch of a wooden oar. The ocean is dark like green leathery leaves around him. The moon shines out of a deep sky. A single bird flies overhead, and the huge man�s dark eyes follow it through long hair that falls in his face and beard. Flying to the moon, lust of light.
The silent outline of a bird looking black against the indigo sky.
in. The moon overhead and the bird. The huge man rising, heaving, shouting, breathing, and sprinting.
He is a huge man running to the rocks with giant�s steps pounding the sand. The licking tides of the sea on his white ankles.
Continued next page...
Page One~Whales