SEQUIM — It’s been a long time coming, but the Jamestown S’Klallam tribe now has a home — a longhouse filled with warm light — inside the Museum & Arts Center.
Six years ago, MAC Executive Director Katherine Vollenweider began dreaming of a permanent installation devoted to the tribal people who have lived here for tens of thousands of years.
“The MAC had ties to the [Manis] mastodon,” she said Tuesday, referring to the exhibit on the ancient creature whose bones were discovered in a Sequim bog in 1977.
Yet the museum had no real ties to “the people who walked with the mastodon,” Vollenweider continued.
Though Sequim is a Klallam word for “quiet waters,” the tribe was largely absent from the 31-year-old MAC building, a home for the Dungeness Valley’s historical and cultural artifacts at 175 W. Cedar St.
Traditional blessing
That changed Tuesday, as Jamestown tribal member Patrick Adams gave a traditional blessing and offered a welcome song at the MAC.
With his two sisters and many other tribal members standing beside him, Adams burned sage and prayed to each of the four directions, explaining that “as the smoke rises, it carries our messages and prayers to the great spirit above.”
After the tribal members — council vice chairwoman Liz Mueller, Janet Duncan, Margaret and Ann Adams and others — carried cedar boughs into the room full of Jamestown artifacts and photographs, Patrick Adams turned to the audience.
“It’s good to see you, my friends and relations,” he said.
Then city officials, MAC board members and other visitors went inside.
They found a small room alive with carvings and colorful images: wooden salmon, “the pulse of the Earth,” a wolf headdress carved by Dale Faulstich, a traditional drum depicting an emerald green frog painted by Pat Adams; a slim paddle bearing a sea wolf created by Jeff Monson.
There’s also a display of photos from the annual Canoe Journey, in which the Jamestown tribe takes part every summer.
This year, tribal pullers from across the Pacific Northwest will travel to the Makah beaches of Neah Bay for the gathering on July 19.
The Jamestown tribe, which now has its headquarters on Sequim Bay in Blyn near its 7 Cedars Casino and Longhouse Market, was unlike many native peoples in that it was not confined to a reservation.
Instead, tribal leaders purchased a swath of land in Dungeness in 1874, and provided each family with a beach front strip, according to display text.
With the festivities on Tuesday, Vollenweider didn’t yet activate the audio aspect of the exhibit.
Drums and singing
But from now on, she promised, visitors who cross the threshold will hear a recording of drums and singing.
This summer, Vollenweider hopes to bring in young tribal members to share stories of their grandparents.
Until this point, “there was a real gap” in the museum’s displays, Vollenweider acknowledged.
Inside the MAC’s longhouse, “the artifacts and stories will change,” she said, adding that many pieces are on loan from the Jamestown tribe’s Northwest Native Expressions Gallery at 1033 Old Blyn Highway.
The longhouse exhibit itself “will always be here,” Vollenweider said.
The museum director worked with a cultural committee and a longhouse exhibit committee to create the installation.
Committee members include Vickie Carroll, who was praised Tuesday for her persistence in bringing people together, as well as tribal members Matthew and Margaret Adams, Sheila Strong, Janet Duncan, Steph Ellyas, Lyn Fiveash, Alicia Gilstrom, Renee Mizar and MAC trustees Priscilla Hudson and Linda Stadtmiller.
Mike Vollenweider, Larry Wing and Rocky Fankhouser served as the exhibit’s fabricators.
The MAC, which also hosts other permanent displays about local history as well as temporary art exhibitions, is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, and admission is free.
For information, phone 683-8110 or visit www.MACSequim.org.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.