History lives at Lelooska

Center mixes special effects, plain old stories

By ERIC BARTELS

The Portland Tribune, Dec 4, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009

jiM CLARK / tRIBUNE PHOTO

A dance program offers a glimpse of the Pacific Northwest’s past at the Lelooska Cultural Center. Tsungani Smith (left) danced here for decades before becoming the principal storyteller.

No one expects fourth-graders to comprehend in 45 minutes the lives of people who existed hundreds of years before them, even if they did live in the same neighborhood.

But a towering black bear, gnashing its wooden teeth in their faces, they get.

For decades, in a simple, hand-hewn longhouse in Southwest Washington, a family that goes by the name Lelooska has been providing just such an experience for children from the Portland area and elsewhere.

It may not be history class for the hundreds of thousands of youngsters who have visited, but it does leave an impression.

“It pulls kids out of their environment and puts them in a strange place,” says Chet Orloff, a local historian and adjunct professor at Portland State University. “You’re looking at lots of big things, bold colors, something that is out of the ordinary.

“One of the most important elements is a sense of place. Not just what’s going on now, but what has happened, who has been around here.”

Fran Riechers, a teacher at Woodstock Elementary School in Southeast Portland, and her fourth-graders visited last week after studying indigenous cultures in the classroom.

“We talk about how the natives lived,” she says. “Now we get to see it. They do their dances, they tell their stories. You come here and it feels real, like maybe the way it was back in those days.”

Riechers’ class and students from three area schools — Woodstock, Cedar Oak Elementary in West Linn and Tobias Elementary in Aloha — converged on the Lelooska ceremonial house and museum in Ariel, Wash., about 10 miles east of Interstate 5 and the town of Woodland.

They pile out of school buses and into the dense forest of fir trees and rhododendrons that surrounds a small, windowless structure of broad cedar boards and a reddish dirt floor.

Here, with their winter coats and a crackling fire to ward off the damp November chill, the kids hear ancient stories of deer people, murderous raiders and a magical grandmother, the tales enlivened by dancers in authentic costumes and spectacular, hand-carved masks.

The musical accompaniment, a single drum and several traditional rattles, may lack the production values of whatever the kids have on their iPods, but it rebounds forcefully off the walls of the lodge.

A small cloud of tiny white feathers suddenly bursts from the mouth of a carved figure against one wall, covering a half-dozen giggling children. It is a blessing, says storyteller Tsungani Smith. Invited guests are to be sprinkled with the down of the sacred eagle.

Kids see monsters and more

With his droopy mustache and earthy Northwest delivery, Smith could pass for just about any 59-year-old guy in rural Southwest Washington, at home on a battered barstool or running a blue-collar business. But he is in fact a lifelong artist and tribal chieftain.

In addition to the old stories, Smith tells visitors about the two staples of coastal Indian culture: salmon and cedar. He talks about native dress, including rainproof hats made from spruce bark and Salish blankets woven from the fur of dogs. And he explains the potlatch, a ceremonial feast in which rights and privileges to songs and dances are transacted along with material goods.

At times, the young audience squirms a bit. Eyes wander about the room and, here and there, whispering breaks out. But the arrival of the cantankerous Numas, a stooped old man with a clattering jaw on a mask the size of a bathmat, gets their attention.

The story of the grandmother loon, who surrenders her human form to save her grandchildren from northern slave hunters, introduces a fantastical articulated mask that opens to reveal a smaller mask within.

Without the benefit of a plasma screen or a DS Lite, the kids are fully on board now.

When Smith warns that the Bigfoot-like Tsonoqua might in fact be a cannibal, an audible murmur goes up. Oddly, as the mythical monster woman enters, so does a small bat, which takes a few laps around the room before disappearing, causing the audience to divide its attentions momentarily.

The same thing happens when an angry bear bursts through the front door a few minutes later. Despite its resemblance to a man in a costume and carved mask, children lock arms and huddle together to save themselves as it lunges, roaring, at them.

Educational? Maybe not in the conventional sense. But it is a scintillating primer on both indigenous cultures and communication.

“Here are some very simple, old, traditional methods of storytelling, and the kids are fascinated,” Orloff says. “You don’t need to have a computer to entertain people. You can do that by the strength of your words.”

“There’s nothing better than experiential learning,” says Teri Geist, principal at Portland’s Alameda Elementary School, which sent its fourth-grade classes to see the program in October. “They just talked and talked about it when they got back.”

Carver became a chief

The Lelooska Cultural Center — the ceremonial house and an adjoining museum — has been entertaining and enlightening youngsters and others for nearly half a century.

Executive Director Mariah Stoll-Smith Reese, the daughter of Tsungani Smith, says roughly 11,000 children will have visited this year when performances end Dec. 13. Saturday evening programs are available to the general public, and the center conducts classes and workshops at local colleges.

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