-
Happy National Audubon Day! 🐣🐦🦅🕊️
Tlingit dugout cedar canoe
- Thread starter Odyssey
- Start date
I first met Wayne and youth team back in 2011 in Haynes AK. My voyageur canoe team and I had just finished the Yukon1000 mile race and were touring parts of Alaska. While in Haynes we drove around the old military base housing and noticed some activity on a large porch. We stopped to see what was going on and saw a number of young people using adzes and other tools to carve out a giant log. Wayne was the obvious adult leader. When he first saw us he had the look like "oh no another tourist group from the cruise ship in port". But as soon as we told him who we were and what we had done he warmed up considerably and became very chatty about his operation with First Nation youth at risk. Gives them something productive and historic to do. The young folk proudly showed off their individual paddles as the "motor" of the canoe.
Then fast forward to 2017 and another Yukon canoe race. Wayne was building another canoe with his team at the Kwanlin Dün Cultural Centre in Whitehorse. I was impressed that he remembered us exactly. We could watch more of the final process, wherin he heated rocks in a fire and used them with water to steam the inside of the canoe under a tarp, which expanded it and formed the final size. He had the timing down to a science to create exactly the finished size he wanted. We bought his picture book in the museum where a video played of the entire process and we had Wayne and his young workers autograph their own photos in the book.
I have photos of both visits stored somewhere.
Then fast forward to 2017 and another Yukon canoe race. Wayne was building another canoe with his team at the Kwanlin Dün Cultural Centre in Whitehorse. I was impressed that he remembered us exactly. We could watch more of the final process, wherin he heated rocks in a fire and used them with water to steam the inside of the canoe under a tarp, which expanded it and formed the final size. He had the timing down to a science to create exactly the finished size he wanted. We bought his picture book in the museum where a video played of the entire process and we had Wayne and his young workers autograph their own photos in the book.
I have photos of both visits stored somewhere.
Last edited:
I recently saw these folks coming down Tagish Lake!
Extremely cool. Blessings to Tlingkit everywhere. I have met some in Alaska.
Fierce tribe that took on the Russians. I had a LIttle Brother that was half Tlingkit. He liked to fight, but was a good kid.
Fierce tribe that took on the Russians. I had a LIttle Brother that was half Tlingkit. He liked to fight, but was a good kid.
- Joined
- Mar 20, 2013
- Messages
- 3,356
- Reaction score
- 475
I was there in 2017 when he build the dug out, I was helping on the birch bark canoe at the time... It is impressive the number of boat he has built....That said it is far from being built in the tradional way, they use fibreglass and epoxy inside and out... Still a good way to involve youth in there "traditions".
