Twenty
years after rallying Native American tribes to build canoes and
paddle them to the beach at Golden Gardens Park, retired Coast Guard
Cmdr. Emmett Oliver celebrates the 20th anniversary of Paddle to
Seattle.
Twenty
years after he led a flotilla of canoes in the Paddle to Seattle,
retired Coast Guard Cmdr. Emmett Oliver sat beneath a striped umbrella
at the edge of the beach as about two dozen canoes, with their crews,
windblown and sunburnt, glided past him, singing in the summer sun.
"Grandpa!
They're singing a Quinault song," said his granddaughter, Christina
Oliver, 29.
Oliver,
95, first rallied Native-American tribes to build canoes and paddle
them from distant reservations to the beach at Golden Gardens Park
as part of the Washington state centennial celebration in 1989.
Before then, the canoe culture was dying out.
Oliver
revitalized it for the coastal Salish people, said Walter Pacheco,
one of the organizers of Sunday's 20-year anniversary. More canoes
were arriving at the park on Seattle's Shilshole Bay throughout
Sunday, with as many as 100 expected this week on the Kitsap Peninsula
for the Paddle to Suquamish.
Although
Oliver, a Quinault, would have preferred being in a canoe, he grinned
broadly as they sailed in, paddles raised in respect.
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