Tomol Trek: California Indians Regathering a Tradition

by Terra Trevor

Our classes are held outdoors under a bead-blue California sky. We work on a patch of green grass, an occasional hawk sweeping over with light shining through her rust red tail. Back in 1997, when there was money available to be used for education, the Santa Barbara County American Indian Education Project began the series “Tomol Trek.”

After much hard work, the project put together an academy with federal (Title V) funding. Each year the academy had a different focus. In 1997 the year’s final outcome was aimed at producing a modern-day recreation of a traditional Chumash tomol. The children and teenagers attending ranged from elementary through high school. Many are Chumash, but the kids represented a variety of tribes, all with a common bond: every one of these kid’s lives in an area that made up the traditional Chumash homeland. We all hold the culture, traditions, and history of the Chumash people in our hands and in our hearts.

The tomol, a type of plank canoe, is unique to the Chumash. Tomols were used for trips between the islands and Chumash settlements. Originally they were about thirty feet long, and could hold four thousand pounds. Usually they carried six people but could hold up to twelve.

Our modern-day tomol was built by the children under the guidance of Peter Howorth, in his backyard tomol building workshop. There is a perfect balance between master and apprentice as the children sand pieces of the vessel throughout construction. A dozen hands move slowly across the handle, moving towards the paddle end of an oar. Small hands, young hands, skin so smooth and maroon, peach-colored hands, muted brown, every child with a tribal memory circling her or his heart.

A kind of palpable energy surrounds the tomol project. People seem to want to be a part of what’s going on. American Indian students from Cal Poly and UCLA arrive to volunteer support. Before I know it, I’m one of those helping out. The more I sand, the closer I am to the tomol. Sometimes I stop in the middle of the day and am silent in respect to the ancient peoples who left the witness of their lives, their visions, the strength of their faith for us to ponder.

My son is one of those kids helping out. He knows about the pleasure found in working hard, and seeing the good results of that work. As he sands the pieces of wood I watch him find his relationship with the plank canoe he is helping to create.

Our real goal is not only the finished tomol; it is also the season long process of working together. Still, everyone eagerly waits the day the vessel will be launched. When the maiden voyage takes place, within the harbor, there is only a small gathering of people. Before the “official” crewmembers begin their training we get to know the tomol. Her name is Alolkoy—dolphin in Chumash. She is twenty-five feet long, and made of redwood. Conditions in the harbor are ideal. The sun is warm; a soft, steady sea breeze blows at our backs. We fill sandbags for ballast, and then one at a time, we each have a turn sitting inside the tomol.

Photo by Terra Trevor

My son, feeling his connection with the Tomol he helped build

Alolkoy is much lighter than I ever imagined. Slowly I become one with her. I only have to “think” of shifting my weight left, and she responds almost before I even move. By the end of the day I understand we should not take photographs while we are with her, not yet anyway. First I watch someone drop a camera into the ocean, and then the back of my camera opens, exposing my film.

Remembrance weighs heavy on my mind, as it does for most Native people seeking to affirm cultural identity in a high-tech world. There is a comfort in being with those who understand. Our kids do not have to trade in their Indian values for education; the project carried ancient memory and cultural knowledge into their lives today.

First Published in the winter 1997 issue of News from Native California. © Terra Trevor. 

Postscript
A number of the children who participated in the Tomol backyard building workshop have grown up to become crewmembers making the crossings from the mainland to Limuw - Santa Cruz Island. 

You might also like to read the follow up story Tomol Evening by Terra Trevor reprinted from Volume 29, No. 2 (Winter 2015/16) of News from Native California.

Terra Trevor is the author of We Who Walk the Seven Ways (University of Nebraska Press). She is a contributor to fifteen books in Native studies, Native literature, nonfiction and memoir. Her essays have appeared in numerous anthologies and literary journals including, Tending the Fire: Native Voices and Portraits (University of New Mexico Press), Children of the Dragonfly: Native American Voices on Child Custody and Education (The University of Arizona Press), The People Who Stayed: Southeastern Indian Writing After Removal (University of Oklahoma Press), Voices Confronting Pediatric Brain Tumors (Johns Hopkins University Press), and in numerous other books. 

Of mixed descent, including Cherokee, Lenape, Seneca and German, her stories are steeped in themes of place and belonging, and are shaped and infused by her identity as a mixed-blood, and her connection to the landscape. She is the founding editor of River, Blood, And Corn Literary Journal.

Voices

By Diane René Christian

Late last fall, early morning, I heard the phone ring. I picked it up and heard my brother’s voice. He said, "Diane- Dad collapsed on Gram’s floor. He wasn’t breathing. He’s in an ambulance now. I’m on my way to meet him at the hospital."

I have no sense of how many minutes passed before the phone rang again. Somewhere in between the calls from my brother I phoned my grandmother. She said, "Dear, he wasn’t breathing for a long time. He’s gone now."

When my brother phoned from the hospital he told me that he was going to put the ER doctor on the phone. I needed to give my permission for my father to die. I did. I don’t remember what I said or how I said it - but he is dead now.

I have two daughters. Both are adopted from China. My youngest was adopted first, at age 2½ and was 6 when my father died. My oldest lived in China for almost 8 years before joining our family. She was 10½ when my father died.

The night of my father’s death I remember saying out loud, but to no one in particular, "I don’t know how to live without a parent."

My oldest daughter heard my cry. She came to my side, placed her hand on my shoulder and said, "You just do."

My youngest daughter refused to leave my side. A well of fear emerged from within her and she raged and wailed in anger at the thought of being separated from me. The equation was simple— if I could lose my father then she could lose me.

Somewhere in the first days of death, I remember hearing my oldest daughter say,"We should burn money for Grandy so he can buy what he needs in Heaven."

In the fog of grief many voices floated by. The voices of strangers, people at banks, cremation services, social security. Voices emerged from piles of letters that my father saved when he was serving in the armed forces in Korea. There were the voices of friends and family that reminded me that I was not the one who left... I was still here.

Sometimes in my dreams there was the voice of my father. Once I dreamed that he was in bed and struggling to get up. He was trying to talk to me. I reminded him that he was dead and that it was OK to leave me.

When the shroud of grief began to unravel, I asked my oldest daughter to tell me about burning money for the dead. She said, every year her village community would gather and burn fake money as an offering to their ancestors. Sometimes they would burn images of clothing and cars and whatever they felt like their ancestors might need on the other side.

On my father’s birthday we wrote letters to him. After we read them aloud, we burned them. We fed our words to the fire with hope that the smoke would carry our voices beyond.

Copyright © 2010 Diane René Christian. All rights reserved.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Diane René Christian, author of An-Ya and Her Diary, is an award winning short story writer turned novelist. She was raised in Pennsylvania and spent her childhood years playing in the fields of Valley Forge Park.  She now resides in the Pacific Northwest with her  two daughters. Visit her at http://anyadiary.blogspot.com/