Canoe revival the basis for new book

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The Great Canoes

By David Neel

135 pages, $27.95

Douglas & McIntyre

Vancouver/Toronto

Vancouver

David Neel is a member of the Fort Rupert Kwagiutl nation, a photographer, visual artist and author of the newly launched book, The Great Canoes, a contemporary history of the revival of the northwest coast tradition of cedar canoe building.

The book was launched after an impressive canoe launching ceremony at Vancouver's Aboriginal Cultural Festival Oct. 14. The canoe was built by Neel and took 800 hours and 16 months to carve. The book was two years in the making and combines the words of Elders, builders, paddlers and chiefs with 70 spectacular photographs.

"It's about the revival of the great canoes. It's a very important happening in the northwest coast. It's the most fundamental part of our traditional culture and it all but disappeared around the turn of the century," said Neel.

With the increased use of gas boats in the latter part of the 19th century, canoe building almost went the way of the do-do. Canoe building, as a movement, began it's revival in the mid-1980s and the book puts that movement in focus by helping everyone, particularly the canoe nations, understand its importance, said Neel.

"It's only in the last decade that we have started to see it come back again. It doesn't just come back as a canoe. It's no longer just a utilitarian vessel. I say it's come back as a metaphor.

"What is coming with it is a lot of skills. You have to learn to paddle a canoe. You have to learn protocol. You have to make you regalia. You have to know some songs, etiquette. So there is a lot of community building going on attached to the canoe revival," said Neel.

In the 12-page foreword to the book, Neel describes the historical significance of the great canoes as a symbol of 'cultural regeneration' as nations struggle with oppression or rapid social and technological change.

The canoe is a metaphor for the community. Paddling, as an example, is the community's commitment to working together. The book also includes a list of the ten rules of the canoe. The rules were developed by the Quileute canoe contingent for an education conference in 1990.

"Every stroke we take is one less we have to make" is the first rule of canoeing, according to the list. Regardless of the struggle, keep going, the rule relates. "Each pull forward is real movement and not a delusion," the book reads.

In the 10-page afterword to The Great Canoes, Tom Heidlebaugh, an Algonquin/Amish/Irish writer and storyteller from La Push, Washington writes of a different world, the time of the canoe and the dream that one day that time will return.

David Neel's work has been exhibited and collected around the world. His book Our Chiefs and Elders was published in 1992. He lives with his family in Campbell River, B.C.