SEQUIM — Those wishing to travel to the beat of a native drum have a friend in Native American Footprints.
The Sequim-based cultural and educational tourism company, owned and operated by business partners Linda Silvas and Susan Davis, has already taken visitors from as far away as England and Germany on guided tours of the North Olympic Peninsula’s tribal lands and culturally significant sites.
Silvas, a Sequim resident and member of the Juaneno Band of Mission Indians in San Diego, Calif., and Davis, founder of the Sequim’s Center of Infinite Reflections, invite visitors to learn about the Peninsula’s tribes, their culture and history.
“Native American Footprints’ main goal is to bring interested visitors to [tribal members] so they can tell their story,” Silvas said. “We employ native people at the reservations to do just that.”
It’s an experience that allows visitors to meet the Peninsula’s First People at home, by listening to storytellers, eating their indigenous foods and seeing the beauty of tribal lands up close.
“In essence, this whole area is Indian Country,” Silvas said.
The all-inclusive tour package, which includes lodging, transportation, dining and fees for five days and four nights, is $3,200.
Shorter and less expensive one- or two-day trips without lodging can be booked as well.
Custom packages come in varying prices, depending on the traveler’s desires.
The all-inclusive tour takes visitors to the Jamestown S’Klallam tribe’s carving shed overlooking Sequim Bay, where totem poles are handcrafted and regally displayed around the tribe’s Blyn community.
Visitors can venture to as far west as the Makah Reservation in Neah Bay or further south on the Olympic Coast to the Quileute Reservation in LaPush at the mouth of a majestic river that flows toward James Island.
They can sit around a campfire, hear tribal members recall their history and even make a Native American drum from hide and cedar to play at a campfire by the sea.
Trips to Sol Duc Hot Springs and Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic Mountains are also taken along the way.
Visitors stay at the Sol Duc Hot Springs Resort in Olympic National Park, at cabins in Neah Bay on the Makah Reservation and the resort at LaPush on the Quileute Reservation.
Dobie Lyons, a Makah, greets visitors at Hobuck Beach and tells them about his culture.
“He loads his truck with wood and brings it to the fire pit,” Silvas said with a smile.
Makah tribal member Steve Pendleton cooks salmon on a stick and gives it a blessing before serving.
Silvas said visitors are taken to the senior center in Neah Bay to meet Makah tribal elders and hear them tell their stories.
Tour groups are encouraged to meet and make friends with tribal members.
“We tell our guests to invite the new people they meet to our encampment for dinner,” Silvas said.
“One night at Hobuck Beach, we must have had 40 people from town come and join us. We had plenty of salmon, potatoes, corn on the cob, bread, salads, Indian breads and desserts. It was a blast.”
Besides salmon, crab and shellfish from the Peninsula’s waters are also served.
Visitors can also learn to weave baskets or buy their own from native weavers.
Private tours of the Makah Cultural and Research Center also can be conducted, Silvas said.
The tours are flexible in nature and can also venture into the woods to walk and pick huckleberries or other natural fruits.
“When we are are in Indian Country, we are living on Indian time,” she said.
“All guests plant a cedar tree as a gift to Mother Earth, to life,” she said, adding they can then return to visit their trees later, knowing while away that their trees are producing healthy oxygen for the environment.
“They leave no footprint as they walk out,” Silvas said. “We leave it clean.”
An in-house photographer, Jim Loughran, is also brought in to photograph visitors at locations.
“We talk about the Canoe Journey and its healthy focus” without substance abuse, she said of the annual water voyage of Pacific Northwest and Canadian tribes to the shores of hosts.
“The purpose of our company is green, in not only an environmental way but a spiritual, healthy way,” Silvas said.
Women-only tours and group retreats are also organized by Native American Footprints.
Silvas said even though the economy has changed for the worse, she and Davis, who handles the marketing end of the business, notice that people still reward themselves with vacations for their hard work.
“It’s like putting a party together,” Silvas said. “You book, do menus and get the people together who are going to work the party.”
Native American Footprints is hooking up with Olympia’s tour businesses and hires Willie Nelson’s All Points Charters & Tours for tour bus service out of Port Angeles.
Silvas said her business also will join with Kenmore Air flying into Port Angeles from points north, including Canada.
If the visitors come in from Seattle, Silvas said they are first taken to Blake Island and Tillicum Village owned by Argosy Cruises.
They are then taken back to near Washington State Ferries Colman Dock where they catch the ferry to Bainbridge Island and a tour bus north to the Peninsula.
“On the way up, we are talking about the history and the protocol for touring Indian Country in a respectful way,” Silvas said. “Each tribe has its own protocol because each is different.”
That protocol covers when and where to take photos and where they can go while on respective reservations.
“We bless the journey and welcome them to Indian Country,” she said.
For reservations or for more information, phone 877-459-8687 or e-mail tours@naftours.com.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
