Port Townsend man helps build Aleut craft, generational bridge for Paddle Journey

Growing up on a small island in Prince William Sound in Alaska, Maggie Fennell used to travel by baidarka, the cedar-framed kayaks covered with sealskin that her grandfather made.

She also went sea-otter hunting with her father in the family’s three-hole baidarka, with the family dog, Bingo, occupying the third hole.

Her father would row them out to the underground otter dens on Chenega Bay, Maggie remembers, where Bingo would jump out of the boat, swim to the dens and scare the otters out of hiding.

When the animals surfaced, her father would reach down and grab them, then club them over the head in order not to damage the pelt.

But that’s not the part that bothered Maggie.

“They used seal intestines for the rain covering built into the boat,” she said. “You got in the boat and pulled it up around you, all the way up to your neck.

“Sometimes they smelled when the intestines weren’t cured right.”

Last Friday, Maggie watched as her grandson, Jared Fennell, cut out shapes of cedar for the bow and stern of a traditional baidarka with the help of Mitch Poling, a retired teacher who grew up in Alaska.

Scheduled to be finished in March, the baidarka is a bridge to the past for Jared’s family and friends of Aleut descent, who plan to pull it from Port Townsend to Neah Bay during the 2010 Paddle Journey.

“It will be the first skin-and-frame canoe in the Paddle Journey, and the first time the Aleut culture have been represented,” said Poling, who moved to Port Townsend after teaching in Alaska.

It was Jared’s aunt, Darcie Pacholl, who started a cultural group last year to revive interest in the heritage of urban Aleuts living in the Puget Sound area.

Building bridges

Called BRIDGE, for Building Respectful Interactions to Develop Goals for American Indian Elders and Youth, the group is designed to bridge the gap between generations of native people by sharing language, culture, beliefs and values.

Wanting members to participate in the Paddle Journey, which has similar goals, Pacholl applied and was accepted for the 2010 trip.

Pacholl asked Jared to build a traditional baidarka and for Poling to advise him.

Jared, a senior at Gig Harbor High School, agreed to take on the boat-building as his senior project.

“We needed a canoe, and we knew that Mitch knew how to build them,” Jared said.

Ten years ago, Poling, who knew Maggie when he lived Chenega in the 1940s, decided to research the island’s baidarka-building tradition, lost when the 1964 earthquake and tsunami hit the island and destroyed the Alaskan village.

Then he designed and built a baidarka with stern and bow details distinctive to Chenega, and he has returned to the island to teach youth and adults how to build the canoe.

The craft are similar to ones like Maggie’s grandfather, Stephan Bristalov, used to make.

“He was the leading kayak builder in Chenega and the only one who could do it all from memory,” Poling said.

So far, Jared has come to Port Townsend for three weekend work sessions with Poling in the garage workshop. Together, they have completed the floor of the 25-foot craft, a strip-cedar Umiak kayak lashed together in the traditional manner.

Last week, Jared was working on the bow and stern pieces, which when finished, will be attached to the keel.

“I’m very impressed by his work,” Poling said. “Jared is showing a lot of his great-great-grandfather’s talent.”

Present and past

Not all of the construction is historic SEmD Poling uses nylon fabric instead of sealskin to cover the cedar frame, and substitutes fish netting for porpoise sinew to lash the boat together.

When the finished baidarka is launched in March, the Rev. Nicholas of St. Herman of Alaska Orthodox Church in Port Townsend will give the traditional blessing, like the one Maggie’s maternal grandfather, an Orthodox priest named Stephan Vlasoff, used to bestow.

BRIDGE members will train for the Paddle Journey and plan to arrive in Port Townsend to help local residents prepare for the stopover, tentatively set for mid-July. Then they will board their craft, which can carry eight adults and head out on the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

“This is their traditional big boat,” Poling said.

Poling has been asked to serve as captain, and artist Sandra Smith-Poling, his spouse, plans to make the trip.

Generations

Three generations of Jared’s family will be aboard, along with Joe Casto, a Makah who is helping build the baidarka, and his mother, Billie Jean Wilcox.

Pacholl has also lent her hand in the construction of the baidarka, an experience that connected her to the days when her grandfathers used them for hunting.

“When you’re working with the cedar, it starts talking to you,” she said. “It talks about using these canoes to get the seal or whale.”

At the January meeting of BRIDGE, Phil Red Eagle will conduct a copper ring ceremony, at which a copper ring is given to a new canoe family.

Each canoe family receives a bead to put on the ring for each paddle journey completed, Pacholl said.

The meeting, at 3 p.m. on Saturday, takes place at the Spirit House, Kwawachee Center, 2209 E. 32nd St., Tacoma, and includes a potluck.

For more information, go to http://nativebridge.org.

_______

Port Townsend/Jefferson County reporter-columnist Jennifer Jackson can be reached at jjackson@olypen.com.

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