o Storyteller Ed Edmo: http://ededmo.tripod.com/id15.html
Her long braids bouncing with each step, Tyese Arthur danced an American Indian “circle dance” Saturday morning with about a dozen other members of the N’chi Wanapum Canoe Family. In beaded moccasins, her feet hopped and stepped to the beating drums.
As they moved in a circle, Arthur and the other fancy dancers from Warm Springs, Ore., also chanted traditional American Indian songs at the base of the Vancouver Land Bridge to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the project’s completion.
Part of the Confluence Project, the Vancouver Land Bridge was inspired by Maya Lin, designer of the Vietnam War Memorial. Its purpose is to reconnect the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site to the Columbia River.
The site’s history as a crossroads continued without a beat, even Saturday. Just as the ceremony began, a BNSF train stopped on the railroad berm overpass, providing a noisy background throughout the event. On the other side of the crowd, vehicles zipped by on Highway 14. And overhead, small planes from Pearson Field and fighter jets from Portland International Airport added to the cacophony.
“We have a confluence of sounds this morning,” said Jane Jacobsen, executive director of the Confluence Project.
Storyteller Ed Edmo engaged visitors with several American Indian stories, including the Colville tribe’s legend of how the Columbia River was created.
“Coyote took a big stick and dug up at the top of the mountains and dug and sang a powerful song,” Edmo chanted and encouraged others to join him.
o Length: 1,500 feet
o Completed: 2008
o Inspiration: Maya Lin
o Architect: Johnpaul Jones
o Firm: Jones and Jones Architects, Seattle
o Native American artwork: Lillian Pitt
Trail of art that is Confluence Project continues to fill in.
o Confluence Project:http://confluenceproject.org
o Fort Vancouver National Historic Site:http://nps.gov/fova
o Artist Lillian Pitt:http://lillianpitt.com/public_art/confluence.html
o Storyteller Ed Edmo:http://ededmo.tripod.com/id15.html
The Land Bridge also reconnects the fort’s village to the river.
People from more than 35 Indian tribes worked at Fort Vancouver and lived in the village outside the fort’s stockade during the Hudson’s Bay Company era, said Fortmann. They arrived at the village via boats on the river.
Warm Springs artist Lillian Pitt created several pieces of artwork for the bridge, including the welcome gate, topped with two canoe paddles and a silver mask of a Chinook woman.
“I made the mask to honor Chinookan women,” Pitt told the crowd. “They were the businesswomen who did the trading.”
“Let’s go forward with reverence for each other,” Pitt said. “Let the welcome gate take you through to the village. You can go through with an open heart.”
