Canoe carver is on a journey of peace

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Canoe carver is on a journey of peace

Thursday, August 29, 2002

By JON HAHN
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

He is a weaver of stories and teller of jokes, a singer of songs, a teacher who is always learning from his students. He also is a carver of huge, solid cedar canoes.

Robert Peele, a 52-year-old native of Prince of Wales, Alaska -- known to his Seattle students and friends by his Haida name, Saaduuts -- is the man behind, on top of and often inside the large cedar canoe taking shape at the Center for Wooden Boats on Lake Union.

And he is a chip off the old log, in the sense that he lives and works toward a oneness with the 600-year-old tree as well as the hundreds of hands that have helped shape it into a formidable 36-foot vessel of hope.

"Robert's mission on earth -- and he lives that mission -- is to bring peace. He is a relentless warrior for Mother Earth, and he hasn't sold out to money or other temptations, or buckled to criticisms or obstacles," said Melissa Koch, the Seattle artist and partner to whom he gives much credit for his life and work. "She is a beautiful Irish lady with fire in her belly, and when I wander from my work, she puts fire under my butt!" he said playfully.

"Saaduuts," by the way, can translate to "awakening of the spirit," but also can be used, and accepted, as simply "friend," he explained. Robert was born near Juneau, Alaska, in 1950, but lived there only briefly before going to live most of his young life with an aunt in the Haida community at Hydaburg, on Prince of Wales Island. At 12, he and other youngsters there were moved to a Bureau of Indian Affairs residential school in Oregon. As a young man, he fished commercially in the Bering Sea, southeast Alaska, Hood Canal and Puget Sound. Robert still has the long, sinewy look of a hard-working commercial fisherman, and his handshake is vise firm. His deep, dark eyes appear soft, serious, but he has a droll sense of humor and engaging smile.

A soft-spoken man with a hint of gray at the temples of his flowing black hair, Robert is a tad uncomfortable to be seen as the center of his several canoe projects. But he softly and patiently responds to questions and comments as he swings his handmade adze beneath the open-air shelter at the foot of Lake Union. There, he and others have turned a 6-ton Alaskan red cedar log into a nine-man Haida canoe that he hopes to sail and paddle back to Alaska, where it will be given to the Tlingit community at Klowack, on Prince of Wales Island.

There have been no blueprints or construction drawings for any of the several canoes Robert has built or is now building. The logs have been selected for their clear, straight grains, age and lack of defects, and have been worked primarily with basic hand tools, such as wedges, adzes and sledgehammers. Following a few chalk lines, he guides his own and others' work by eye and by feeling the wood as it is worked, sort of like a potter sensing his clay.

"I never did this before," Robert explains of this abiding passion and full-time involvement with canoe-carving. "But people have helped me, and the spirit has shown me ways to help awaken the world. It's all about the message of love and peace, and teaching the children the responsibilities of work and respecting one another and Mother Earth. All along the way, things have happened and people have come to help. All I had to do was start the canoe and people will come to you."

Build it, and they will come. And they have.

Even as he nears completion on this carving project, Saaduuts is the hands-on teacher of many students carving an even larger cedar canoe at Seattle Alternative School No. 1, near Northgate. There, students who have done most of the carving, cutting and grunt work on that 40-foot vessel for the past two school years are eager to see it completed. The students voted to donate the canoe to Saaduuts' home village of Hydaburg.

Some of the older students, such as Eames Bookwalter, and Laura Miller, both 14 and A.S. No. 1 graduates, hope to be a part of the crews that will sail and paddle the canoes north, on what Saaduuts says will be "just another part of what has been a journey and a half." From the first cut, the canoe projects have been a journey of discovery, he said, in which we learn how all peoples are related to one another, and to Mother Earth. "Sometimes, people just stop by to see, and they end up asking if they can work!" Robert said with a knowing smile.

Don Snyder, principal of A.S. No. 1, said the students there already have crafted several hundred bracelets and other artifacts to be given to the Haida community as part of a potlatch celebration linked to the arrival of the donated canoe.

Although many, many hands have helped, much of the work has fallen on Robert and Melissa, who for several years have worked -- often full time -- on the projects. About $20,000 in various grants have been spread thin over several years on things like handmade tools, project shelter and materials and other expenses.

"There hasn't been a lot of money, but it's not about that," he said while working on the Spirit of Peace canoe at Lake Union. "It's about healing and the spirit, about following the spirit and feeling the medicine flow in you." As he works, a white-haired man and two women watch quietly, and listen respectfully to his words. Richard Beyer, whose own creations such as "Waiting for the Interurban" also have garnered substantial respect, smiles as Saaduuts cracks a joke and then explains how the canoe-carving is helping children to learn responsibility and adults to learn to listen to the truths of children's hearts and from Mother Earth. Beyer and the women stand quietly, nodding appreciatively, as Saaduuts gestures over the canoe while he chants a "Thank You to Mother Earth" song.

These two canoe projects were preceded by a smaller teaching-and-carving canoe project at Kilo Junior High in Federal Way, where another Weyerhaeuser old-growth cedar log became a canoe that students there voted to give to Chief Seattle's Duwamish tribe. "The idea came from Robert, who had just finished reading some of Chief Seattle's words," Melissa said. "We were driving along I-5 when he came up with the idea, and suddenly we drove beneath an incredibly beautiful rainbow, and we knew!"

Weyerhaeuser also went to great lengths -- literally and figuratively -- to find the huge cedar log for the A.S. No. 1 project. The 6-ton log for the Spirit of Peace canoe at Lake Union was donated by the Haida Corp.

A substantial amount of work remains on both the A.S. No. 1 and Center for Wooden Boats canoe projects, although the latter is close to completion, Robert said. The gunwales must be shaved to a 3/4-inch uniform thickness. And a centuries-old process of steaming the entire vessel -- filling most of the interior with red-hot stones and salt water and covering -- will both spread the width for installation of braces and force both fore and aft ends to curve slightly upward.

There will be celebrations marking the completions, followed perhaps by some test voyages within Puget Sound. But he has no doubts that the canoes will float well and true. "If I believe in my own balance within me, the boat will balance, too." He also believes that all things will flow as the spirit provides, although he allows that the spirit also will have to provide more funds for all this to happen.

As they near completion, each log gives up huge chunks and slabs of wood that will become hand-carved ceremonial masks and paddles for the canoe. "Everyone who visits the work sites goes away with a cedar chip, to have a part of the dream," Robert said. "Thousands of chips have gone away with people from all over the world. That is good."

No chips are allowed to fall where they may. Every leftover chip will be ground and used for mulch on the grounds where the canoes are being carved. It is part of giving back to Mother Earth.

Information: Canoe carving projects can be seen at the Center for Wooden Boats, on the south end of Lake Union at 1010 Valley St., and Seattle Alternative School No. 1/Pinehurst Elementary, 11530 12th Ave. N.E.

Spirit of Peace canoe information is available also at www.spiritofpeace.pwebtech.com or from Robert Peele or Melissa Koch, P.O. Box 77381, Seattle, WA 98177-0381.

Jon Hahn's column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Call him at 206-448-8317 or send e-mail to jonhahn@seattlepi.com