Salish story poles do exactly that: tell stories.
The one Salish multimedia artist Ed Archie NoiseCat is carving at The Evergreen State College tells the story of the Boldt Decision and three Indigenous activists who fought for the historic tribal fishing rights ruling: Billy Frank Jr., Ramona Bennett and Hank Adams.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the decision, a court ruling by U.S. District Court Judge George Boldt that affirmed Indigenous treaty rights that provided tribes with half of the salmon harvest and set them up as co-managers of the state’s fisheries. Frank led a series of civil disobedience protests known as the Fish Wars to defend those rights and to bring national and international attention to their cause.
“This is being done to recognize the Fish Wars and the people that were involved, mainly being Billy Frank Jr.,” NoiseCat said. “He had a lot of people that helped him get there.”
NoiseCat is carving the 13-foot story pole on Evergreen’s Indigenous Arts Campus during a six-month residency hosted by the Longhouse Education and Cultural Center . He works in the Pay3q’ali carving studio alongside his apprentices Ablaza Pluff and Earl Pluff, who are also Salish.
His residency began in February and will end in August. After NoiseCat finishes it, the story pole will be on display in the Evergreen Gallery or Longhouse.
“Billy had been a Board of Trustees member for the college, and he had always been a part of the Longhouse history. So, he attended our events, he spoke at our events. He was a big part of the early years,” Longhouse director Laura VerMeulen said. “And so for us, it seemed like a really natural fit to have this particular project.”
From statue to story pole
The story pole began as a stick — Frank’s talking stick, which he holds in the statue NoiseCat submitted for selection to create one of Washington state’s two statues in the U.S. Capitol’s National Statuary Hall. Each state has two statues representing them, and a statue of Frank will replace one of missionary Marcus Whitman in 2025.
NoiseCat started planning his submission in 2019. His preparations included studying Frank’s talking stick, which he said he had in his possession for almost a year. In NoiseCat’s submission, Frank stood with his talking stick in hand as salmon swam up from the statue’s pedestal and wrapped around its base.
As a Coastal Salish person, Frank has a lot of story, NoiseCat said. Therefore, NoiseCat thought it important for Frank to have his talking stick, which he used to present himself and the story he told others.
“When he was in the room, everybody listened to him and he didn’t really need a talking stick,” NoiseCat said. “But in the Statuary Hall, he doesn’t have his voice. He has his talking stick to do the talking for him. That’s why I did it this way.”
However, NoiseCat’s submission was not chosen; Seattle artist Haiying Wu is sculpting the statue now at South Puget Sound Community College.
But soon after, NoiseCat heard about the Longhouse’s residency program. He has been working with the Longhouse for decades; it never occurred to him that he could work in residence there.
“Someone dropped the idea on me and I called Laura, and Laura had a wide open studio and had a grant that needed to be filled right away. And I happened to have a presentation right there and dropped that off with her,” NoiseCat said. “And we were off and running.”
Telling the story
Just weeks after he and VerMeulen came to terms on his residency in January, NoiseCat had redesigned the statue’s talking stick into the story pole.
He had also found the wood he would make it out of: a piece of yellow cedar and a 10-foot piece of old-growth red cedar about 500 years old, both sourced on the Olympic Peninsula.
Then, NoiseCat started carving in February.
“I wanted to tell more of the entire story with the piece rather than having it all be in a talking stick, which is really hard to do because the scale is just wrong,” NoiseCat said. “So we’ve kind of taken the talking stick idea and turned the story pole into the talking stick.”
Carved into the center of the red cedar is a spindle whorl, a Salish symbol of wealth, with runs of salmon swirling out of the epicenter. They come from the ocean — the bottom of the story pole, also home to an orca and octopus — and swim up to the rivers, meeting toward the top of the wood. There, the salmon split in the middle: the Boldt Decision.
Atop the red cedar main will be Frank himself, made of yellow cedar and standing in a river canoe as he casts his fishing net out over the water below him. NoiseCat is carving the yellow cedar separately before placing it atop the red cedar main.
Portraits of Bennett and Adams will join Frank on the story pole, carved into the red cedar under either side of his canoe.
“I made the pole tell the story and Billy Frank is a character in that story,” NoiseCat said.
Along with Frank and the other activists who fought for the Boldt Decision, the story pole celebrates the judge who made it: George Hugo Boldt. Below Frank and his canoe, NoiseCat will carve “Boldt 1974” in Roman-style lettering.
“That will probably be the title of the piece,” NoiseCat said.
Salmon has formed the basis of many Indigenous cultures, said VerMeulen, who is Tlingit. As the primary fish they fish for, salmon is critical to Indigenous peoples throughout the rainforest region, from Yakutat, Alaska, to Northern California.
But climate change, overfishing, pollution, trawling and other issues affect the salmon population. Climate change even affects ground temperature and snow cover, killing the same cedar the story pole is made of.
To VerMeulen, the story pole is an intersection of all of this.
“Billy would always say, and a lot of the activists like Ramona and Hank would also say, you don’t have any treaty rights if you don’t have any salmon,” VerMeulen said.
In residence
NoiseCat’s residency at the Longhouse brings together skills he has worked on for almost four decades.
After graduating from the Emily Carr College of Art and Design in 1986, he started in the New York art world as a master lithographer and printmaker. From there, he went to carving, and worked in other media including bronze, silver, gold and glass.
Now NoiseCat is passing those skills on to his apprentices, students and other visitors to the carving studio.
The carving studio will have open hours during which visitors can see NoiseCat’s progress on the story pole. He is also teaching carving classes there this summer.
“We’re touching on all the different aspects of making art from our carving sense. We’re making axes and everything, we’re making tools as well,” NoiseCat said. “It’s a full-on experience of learning how to go about this type of art making.”
VerMeulen said a focus of the grant funding NoiseCat’s residency is inter-generational learning and teaching.
“The work with the apprentices, the opportunity to bring other people in to see the project, to see artwork of this size and scope in progress, being made, is a huge deal,” VerMeulen said. “A lot of times people will see the work completely finished and they’re not aware of the process or the steps that are involved in it.”
Much of NoiseCat’s work deals with environmental movements. Namely, he designed one of seven 40-foot banners that flew from the Canadian Iron Workers Memorial Bridge in 2018 to protest the Trans Mountain Expansion Pipeline project.
The story pole is no different. Honoring Frank with it provides a place for others to start in the discussion of protecting salmon and carrying on the fight he started, NoiseCat said.
“He gained the right for Native people to get half of the salmon,” NoiseCat said. “But what happens when the salmon are dwindled away? … Humans have put up every obstacle that they possibly could against the salmon, and all we’re trying to do is make their trip a little bit easier.”
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