Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival 2026

From a wooden boat and waterborne perspective, Leslie will take her audience on a voyage of Native history, loss and into our recent tremendous renewal of Native Canoeing strength as communities gather and traveling on the local Salish Sea waters once again. From research in library and museum photo archives, early explorers journals and ethnographies; as well as from searching to find and then make lines drawings from older representative canoes; right into recording Native Elders' own stories and hearing of community needs; she will share how communities found old growth, learned to carve and steam the great cedar into transformed canoes as the old masters knew how to do.  She'll present the excitement of "Bringing them canoes back" during the first PADDLE TO SEATTLE in 1989; and then a remarkable challenge for a 500 mile canoe pilgrimage ~ pulling all the waty up to Bella Bella, Canada.  And then land this presentation, by moving it forward to the rich gatherings of more than 100 canoes and six thousand Native folks now as the Tribal Journeys have matured.