Neah Bay: Makah 1

I felt uncomfortably surprised in Neah Bay when my friend openly admitted being put-off by the look of dilapidation and that “these people wouldn’t do anything to better themselves.”  Better than what, I wondered.

Perspective is a funny thing. People can carry around hidden fears and biases, until the moment they are forced to bring their feelings straight to the surface.

Yes, the houses were run down, dogs ran all over town, and many yards had stacks of unwanted stuff lying on the ground. Still, I don’t think what I saw is what she saw. Neah Bay looked the way I thought it would. It’s a reservation. I’ve seen many, and I’ve seen worse. Indian nations are a whole different world. The dilapidation is the encroachment of the “white man”—the usurper. In my mind, I couldn’t think of how it would or should look any different, not after what the Makah have suffered. The European invasion of America demolished nearly everything that resembles native heritage and culture. Why shouldn’t an indian town reflect that.

We pulled into Neah Bay around one thirty, and stopped first at the Museum of the Makah Indian Nation. Our guide, Janine Bowechop, is the executive director of the museum, full-blooded Makah, as articulate as any professor with whom I’ve studied, and damned proud of her blood. I had never heard of the Makah, but I left the museum with overwhelming admiration. Over four thousand years ago, they were created through mythology—given sustenance by the Thunderbird—but they survived with scientific discovery and and engineering prowess. They still do.

They are a people who go head-to-head and toe-to-toe with life everyday. The Makah would not want it any other way. They fish, hunt, and log for survival. What they do defines them, and what they do—what they have done— fills them with pride. Their food does not come in plastic containers from Trader Joe’s. Their trinkets and knick-knacks do not sit idly on shelves, waiting to be dusted when company comes over. What they make for themselves has meaning and use. What they have gotten from the non-Indian lies discarded in heaps in their various yards—stacks of stuff that mean nothing to their heritage and way of life. Only because of changing times do they have to accept or buy into certain things and ideas; it’s hard not to when eighty percent of the vast lands that once marked your home were taken away in the 1855 Treaty of Neah Bay.

In the old days, they hunted whales from eight-man canoes. One man among the crew would jump onto the back of a harpooned whale, to sew closed the sea mammal’s mouth to ensure it could not submerge and escape. Riding the back of a wounded, albeit angry whale… I’ve never met a bull rider with that kind of intrepidity.

The Makah had to be a strong people. They still are; the land where they dwell, at the northern-most tip of the continental United States, demands it.

Thus, I will not berate them for the appearance of their yards, or their tendency to openly discard those things that the Earth does not provide. They have their own way of life, their own way of thinking, and I have no doubt that they are thinking quite along the same line as what the land needs and asks them to think.