Pulling Together: North Pacific Coast Peoples Celebrate the Revival of Canoe Journeys

By early afternoon on a rocky Suquamish beach north of Seattle, the canoes kept coming. First one or two, then more than seventy, cedar dugouts alongside fiberglass hulls, painted with the names and symbols of the nations that paddled them. Each crew held its paddles up in peace and asked permission to come ashore, as their ancestors did. Some had pulled for more than two weeks, covering twenty miles a day, on the 2026 Medicine Creek Potlatch Journey.