Members of six Northwest Washington tribes Monday blessed the future site of a longhouse on Peninsula College’s Port Angeles campus that will lend a focus to Native American cultural activities at the school.
More than 100 people braved mounting wind and worsening rain on the cedar-shadowed southeast corner of the campus where the $830,000 structure will be built.
A procession of nine women — some ringing brass bells, others carrying candles and wafting their glow toward the center of the area — walked three times around it in a ceremony of the Indian Shaker Church.
Later in the Pirate Union Building, Elaine Grinnell of the Jamestown S’Klallam tribe invoked Sioux Chief Arvol Looking Horse to solemnize the occasion:
“Each of us has been put here in this time and this place to decide the future of mankind.
“Did you think you were put here for something less?”
In addition to Grinnell’s tribe, participants included members of the Hoh, Makah, Quileute, Lower Elwha Klallam and Port Gamble S’Klallam tribes.