A Balancing Act: Tradition and Change
Young Coast Salish artists are putting their own spin on traditional story pole carving
Jason LaClair, whose Lummi name is Sienum, prays with Samuel Cagey’s pole in the Hotel Leo. Carvers treat story poles as sacred, spiritual beings, showing the utmost respect toward them. // Photo by Eli Voorhies
Story and photos by Eli Voorhies
December 8, 2023
Wood shavings blanket the floor. Carving tools lie upon a pair of fold-out tables and a 20-foot-cut of an old-growth tree. The inviting, piney aroma of red cedar fills the air. Felix Solomon chips away at a large chunk of wood in his studio resembling a mini airplane hanger.
Felix Solomon sits next to a fold-out table covered with an array of tools, mostly carving knives, in his studio on July. 25, 2023. This is only a fraction of the gear Solomon uses in the process. Most carvers also use power tools. // Photo by Eli Voorhies
He is carving a fierce salmon mask to match the identical copy on the back wall of his workspace. A carving of a small, light blue fish rides atop the masks, representing the spirit of the Dog Salmon.
Solomon carved the original when the salmon didn’t return to the Western Washington rivers in 2017.
He made the mask as an outlet for his sadness, but it also portrays hope.
“The spirit of the fish will come back when it is strong enough,” Solomon said. He is a member of the Haida, Yakama and Lhaq’temish (Lummi) people.
The Lummi, or People of the Sea, are one of many Coast Salish tribes – the first peoples to live in the area from southern Vancouver Island to just north of the Columbia River.
At 66 years old, Solomon is a master of Coast Salish carving and undertakes one of the practice’s most demanding forms: story pole carving.
Since the turn of the 19th century, Salish carvers have transformed towering cedar trees into the free-standing poles.
Story poles tell stories. Usually, they depict beings important to Lummi culture like Raven, Killer Whale or Salmon.
“Raven was one of the first creatures created and he saw everything else that was created. He learned the languages of all the animals,” Ralph Bennett said, a 74-year-old master carver of the Haida. “Mostly, the old stories are based on a moral of some sort.”
Ralph Bennett rests his hand on a mask that he is currently working on in Felix Solomon’s studio. Though Bennett is not Coast Salish, he has learned about their carving forms in the course of making and restoring over 50 poles with Solomon. // Photo by Eli Voorhies
Through the poles, carvers document history.
The late carver Joe Hillaire depicted the Lummi’s hospitality towards the first white settlers in their territory on the Bellingham Centennial History Pole. It was restored by Solomon and Bennett earlier this year.
Together, the two master carvers have made and restored over 50 story poles.
As some master carvers have leaned into positions of mentorship, a new generation is taking up the reins. These younger artists walk a thin line between sticking to tradition and making the art their own.
Championing Tradition: Sienum — Jason LaClair
Jason LaClair, whose Lummi name is Sienum, runs his hands along a story pole at the Hotel Leo in Bellingham, Wash. Closing his eyes, his hands pause on the smooth surface. He takes a moment to pray with the pole – his routine before starting work on it.
“When you go in there to work on the pole, it is a live being,” LaClair said, a member of the Lummi, Nuxwsá7aq (Nooksack) and Xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) tribes. “It has spiritual powers.”
The 40-year-old’s first story pole is the most recent in a string of projects, mostly murals, around Whatcom County.
In July of 2023, LaClair was entrusted with the pole by beloved Lummi elder Samuel Cagey Jr., who became too sick to finish it during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Already, Cagey had carved the basic forms of Eagle, Whale and Bird Man—among others— into the cedar trunk.
“With this pole, what I loved about it most, each and every one of these beings is connected to Samuel in one way or another,” LaClair said. “He was very open to share his heart.”
In Lummi custom, carvers have connections to the natural beings they bring to life on the poles, whether through personal encounters or ancestral heritage.
Before LaClair began carving, the pole had been sitting next to Cagey’s house for six years, enduring each gust of wind and torrent of water in the harsh Salish weather.
There was much work to be done.
LaClair, who had never so much as taken a piece of sandpaper to a pole, was nervous. Unsure of how to proceed, he sought advice from Lummi elders.
A vibrant story pole, started by Samuel Cagey Jr. and taken over by Jason LaClair, rests under bright lights in the Hotel Leo in Bellingham, Wash. LaClair expects to finish the pole, whose figures and natural beings are carved 3-dimensionally, by the end of December 2023. // Photo by Eli Voorhies
“I asked [Cagey], ‘in designing this do you want me to get it as close to your style as I can or’ — and before I could even [finish] he goes — ‘I want you to put your heart into it! I want you to pretty it up with the designs you do on your murals,’” LaClair recounted. “That gave me confidence.”
Cagey wasn’t the only one to give that advice to LaClair.
“If you’re going to carve, you better do it with your whole heart,” Solomon told LaClair.
LaClair did, and poured hours into shaping, finetuning and painting the piece.
LaClair predicts he will complete the pole by the end of December 2023. For now, the pole can be viewed from outside Hotel Leo’s ground floor windows or up-close during Bellingham’s First Friday Art Walks.
“Now that I am really close to the finish line, part of me feels sad in a way because of the amount of time I have spent with the pole,” LaClair said. “At the same time, I am really proud — coming from a place of fear, of stepping into the unknown, to trusting the spirit and the guidance of Samuel and Felix.”
Throughout the process, he followed the traditional style of Salish carving and painting.
Salish artists start their designs with an outline and work their way inwards. They exclusively use circles, ovals, crescents and trigons (a curved shape whose variations always have three points and sides). This method emphasizes negative space: the empty space between lines.
“Imagine dropping a pebble into a still bowl of water and the ripples that go out. That’s the crescents and then the trigons eventually,” LaClair said.
These elements reflect the Lummi people’s connection with water.
“[Our art] is a map in a way. It should reflect the land, the people of that territory and what teachings these people received from the land,” said Tsx’vilum (Free Eagle Borsey), a 25-year-old Lummi artist.
Both Borsey and LaClair are committed to traditional Coast Salish art forms.
“For myself, if I am going to be representing my ancestors from the Salish territory, then that's the only style I am going to use,” LaClair said.
Often Salish art gets confused with Formline art, which is traditional to the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian tribes, whose territory lies just north of the Coast Salish. Formline artists start their designs in the middle and work their way outward. They build the design like a puzzle, putting a specific set of shapes together: ovoids, U-forms and S-forms. Northern art emphasizes positive space.
“What Northern and Salish art have in common is that there is a flow to them,” LaClair said.
While some new-generation carvers like LaClair stick very closely to Salish tradition, others are pushing the boundaries.
A vibrant carving of a Dog (Chum) Salmon in its hatching period in master carver Felix Solomon’s studio. He created the piece after salmon didn’t make it back up Western Washington rivers in 2017. // Photo by Eli Voorhies
Changing Tradition: Xwesultan — Raven Borsey
Xwesultan (Raven Borsey) had all but quit carving after suffering nasty cuts twelve years ago.
In the past winter, 25-year-old Raven Borsey and his twin Free Borsey severed themselves from modern life and technology. During this spiritual journey, Raven Borsey was on a walk when he found a particularly alluring piece of beach wood. He stowed it for later.
Months later, his uncle brought over carving knives, and Raven Borsey began to carve. On the swirling piece of wood he had picked up, an eagle pulls a serpent disguised as a whale out of the water.
“It kind of shaped itself. You form with the way the water formed the wood,” Borsey said.
Borsey never understood why he carved it until his mentor, Daryll Hillaire, shared an old Lummi story about a notorious battle. In it, thunderbirds are baited into seizing a serpent whose back is covered with the image of a whale.
“It was fascinating how I never had any familiarity with that story. It feels like there is a spiritual energy, that things happen for a reason,” Borsey said.
Since then, Borsey has been passionate about carving. He has started small, creating necklaces and other items out of beach wood and yellow cedar.
Borsey takes a unique approach to Coast Salish art. Previously, he mixed Salish with Formline – due to a lack of understanding. Currently, he does so with realism.
Xwesultan (Raven Borsey) poses next to his carving of an eagle. Working on this piece got him interested in carving again. // Photo by Eli Voorhies
Traditionally, Coast Salish carvers use minimal linework, which puts more focus on the textures and the grain of the wood. Borsey adds more detail with his realism, making the beings more anatomically correct.
Fundamentally, this breaks the design rules of the Salish art form.
Talk and criticism circulated through local tribal communities about Borsey’s art not being reflective of Coast Salish identity. For a while, Borsey was too ashamed to share his art.
Originally, Borsey had neglected the rules of Salish art — blending it with Formline — because he never learned them. He had two options: sit back and soak up the disapproval or learn the rules.
“I am hoping I can find more teachers like Jason LaClair. He’s stepped up and been really helpful,” Borsey said.
After learning to differentiate between different indigenous art forms, Borsey believes he can find a balance between retaining traditions and going beyond their constraints.
Borsey abandoned his old method – combining Salish and Formline – and is creating his own method – combining Salish and realism. He will continue to practice Salish and Formline separately.
“I do follow the rules to the best of my knowledge – while creating my own uniqueness, my own identity within the artwork,” Borsey said. “It’s not just Lummi artwork, it’s Raven’s artwork and he’s from Lummi.”
Chu-Chow-Wel-Tul (Dionisio Romero) sits in front of a house post and between two welcome figures that he helped carve on Aug. 15. Romero is a carving apprentice under Jonas Jones and Ray Natraoro in Vancouver B.C. // Courtesy of Dionisio Romero
Colonial Impacts on Carving
Artists like LaClair, Free Borsey and Chu-Chow-Wel-Tul (Dionisio Romero) shared a similar path to Raven Borsey. At the start of their careers, they were not aware of what made Salish art Salish.
“When I was growing up, there was no one around to tell us ‘that is not Salish -- that’s Northern.’ Or ‘that’s not Salish – that’s Interior,’” Romero said, a 24-year-old apprentice in Vancouver, B.C. from the Nooksack Tribe.
Without mentorship, younger generations turned to the internet. They copied what they saw and unknowingly adopted techniques like Formline, thinking it was Salish.
The lack of instruction is a direct impact of the policies of American colonialism. The Homestead Act of 1862 and the removal of Indigenous children from their families to residential boarding schools in the 1880’s until the 1980’s disconnected tribal individuals from their land and people.
“The government tried to take our kids away and put them in residential schools and to take our heritage, our language and our culture -- our whole way of life,” Solomon said.
Before the Lummi Nation and other Coast Salish communities were forced onto reservations in the 1800s, amateurs could take the time to visit their tribe’s carving masters, said Raven Borsey. Practices like story pole and welcome figure carving, which is an even older practice of Coast Salish carving that welcomes people to a specific tribe’s territory, can take decades to learn.
Two story poles, recently restored by Felix Solomon and Ralph Bennett, tower solidly above inside the Whatcom Museum. They are part of a set of three poles that were carved in a grant program in the 1970s. // Photo by Eli Voorhies
Now, young artists find it difficult, if not impossible, to make time for that kind of commitment.
“You’re working five days a week and going to school five days a week. You get a weekend to do homework. Well, where is our time to hone our crafts and our skills? That’s the colonial trap,” Borsey said.
Northwest Indian College and Western Washington University should offer carving classes where beginner carvers can have more opportunities to learn from masters, according to Borsey.
Even if carvers have the time to learn their trade from experts, the money does not come easily, according to master carver Solomon. This is especially daunting in a world where it is necessary to have a steady income to survive.
That is a hard pill to swallow for new carvers.
Carvers can make spiritual and personal art rather than commercial art for money, according to Solomon.
“Don't do it for a living; do it for the culture's sake. Learn to learn,” he said.
The Lummi tribe nearly lost the tradition of story poles. The impacts of white settlers, including disease and forced assimilation, left only 395 Lummi people living on the reservation by 1910. Settlers also discounted the work of Lummi artists.
“In the 1800’s Lummi art was seen as barbaric or simple. And I hate the word simple,” said Free Borsey. “The reason our artwork seems simple is because we were taught to be humble: to draw the being and not fill it in with what we think is beautiful. To let [its] beauty speak for itself.”
By the 1970s, there were only two master carvers still practicing in the Lummi community: Morrie Alexander and Al Charles, according to a report from the Whatcom Museum.
Through a grant program at the museum, Alexander and Charles took on two young apprentices each: Dale and Israel James, and Al and Floyd Nolan respectively.
With them, rested the fate of Lummi carving.
“We are really blessed that we had people like Al Charles, Morrie Alexander, and Dale James to carry the tradition. If it wasn’t for these historical people some of our culture could have been lost, big time,” LaClair said.
Now, the art form is alive and well, according to Solomon.
Some non-Indigenous people imagine that present-day carvers stick to carving knives and other non-automated tools like their ancestors; however, the carvers of today often incorporate power tools.
“My uncle said it best ‘We weren’t dumb. If there was a better, faster way to do things, we did it,’” Romero said.
The new generation of Salish artists is proving that they can bring change while upholding traditional values.
“If you’re creating something from your own heart, it’s yours,” Raven Borsey said, words shared with him by elder and master carver Samuel Cagey Jr.
The map gives a general idea of tribal locations and territories. However, all land masses, bodies of water and territories were rendered by hand, so it is not completely accurate. // Created by Eli Voorhies
Eli Voorhies is a third-year student in the visual journalism program. He enjoys connecting with people and learning about new cultures.