Young people lend Sydney a hand at the Chinook Indian Nation’s First Salmon Ceremony in June.

It’s probably not politically correct anymore, but when I was a kid back in the first half of the 1900s, we still played cowboys and Indians. Almost all of us wanted to be Indians but the boys who had those toy holsters with loaded cap guns were automatically the cowboys and the rest of us might be mountain men. Or horses. Or, depending on our scenario, the dusky maidens out picking berries and rescuing the cowboys. Or horses.

Of course, in our Alameda, California neighborhood, we didn’t have many role models. If my folks thought it was “suitable” I might get to go to a movie matinee featuring John Wayne or Gabby Hayes or Jay Silverheels. But it was Debra Paget who I longed to be, despite my blue eyes and curly blond hair.

Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that, as an old lady not far from her 90th year, I’d be an invited guest at the Chinook Nation’s First Salmon Ceremony or that I’d be treated as an valued elder throughout a day full of special observances and time-honored rituals. Or that I’d feel a part of the easy camaraderie among the hundreds of people gathered on Scarborough Hill at Chinook Point. It was an astonishing and powerful experience.

Reserved for elders

When we arrived my friend Judy Little (granddaughter of Myrtle Johnson Woodcock, the last Princess of Oysterville), Cate Gable (longtime friend and sometimes collaborator) and I (the old Debra Paget wannabe), set up our chairs behind a row of folks who had arrived just ahead of us. They turned to greet us and, it seemed to me that “as one” and without communication among themselves, picked up their own chairs and moved them behind ours. “The front row is for elders,” one of the women said! Cate and I were gobsmacked.

Judy just smiled — she’s been coming to the First Salmon since she can remember — since her grandmother dedicated Chinook Point to Fort Columbia State Park in 1951. It’s an area that has been an important part of Tribal life for untold centuries. As Judy told me in an interview for the Chinook Observer several years ago: “Grandma Myrtle spoke in the Chinook language as she offered a prayer to the Great Spirit. I was eight years old and witnessed this impressive ceremony. I knew way back then that I, too, would one day be a strong supporter of the tribe.”

As the day progressed, punctuated by explanations of rituals and taboos and age-old customs by Chinook Tribal Chairman Tony Johnson, we talked and visited with dozens of people. Many greeted Judy as “Cousin.” I was delighted to see tribal members I know and amazed at others who greeted me by name, though I had no memory of them. I felt humbled and honored and glad to be an elder — all at the same time. And when it came time to go down the hill to welcome the canoe bearing the First Salmon, I was assisted by two young Tribal Members, both students at Chemawa Indian School in Salem, Oregon — one supporting each arm. “How are you doing?” they asked as we walked down the rocky path. “Are you doing all right?”

A few days later

Just two afternoons later, I was sitting in the historic Oysterville Church, participating in an age-old ritual of our own culture — a Music Vesper Service. Joel Underwood, the folksinger that Sunday, mentioned that he was returning to his teaching career in Seattle. “As a history teacher,” he said, “but I’ll be returning as a middle school teacher, not in a high school position.”

As a retired elementary teacher, I had to bite my tongue not to shout out, “Middle school?! Are you crazy?! Three-year-olds with raging hormones!” But after listening for a few moments, that thought morphed to, “You are a saint!” He told how he loved watching those middle schoolers change and grow from childhood toward adulthood right before his eyes.

We all laughed at his description of the kid who strode through a doorway with perfect bravado one day and broke out with an “Ow!” the next day when his shoulder hit the door jamb. Surely that wasn’t there yesterday, his expression said. “But of course, it was; he was just growing so fast he hadn’t been able to keep track of himself,” laughed Joel. “I just love those kids!”

I’ve thought about that a lot and about how we compartmentalize our community members (and thus, our thinking) with daycare facilities and graded schools and homes for our elderly. And now we distance ourselves still further with virtual classrooms and virtual work and virtual meetings and virtual reunions. Do we have enough real-time gatherings of all of us together, across our ages, so that we can understand and respect one another and know that, somehow, we are all related? I’m still thinking about it…