Japanese Ainu to Paddle in Tribal Canoe Journey

This post is a part of a series about a year-long cultural exchange the Burke Museum is leading between the Ainu Association of Hokkaido and six tribal groups in Washington: The Duwamish Tribe, The Makah Nation, The Suquamish Tribe, The Squaxin Island Tribe, The Tulalip Tribes, and The House of Welcome Long House at Evergreen State College. In 2008 the Ainu were formally recognized by Japan’s government as the nation’s “first peoples.”

In the culminating event of a year-long cultural exchange between the indigenous Ainu community of Japan and several Washington State tribal groups, a group of Ainu paddlers will join the Tulalip Tribes in the annual Tribal Canoe Journey event, this year hosted by the Makah Nation.

The Ainu will travel the farthest distance of any group to participate in this year’s Tribal Canoe Journey. Similar to Northwest Coast indigenous communities, canoes have long played an important part in the lifestyle and livelihood of the Ainu. The Ainu are currently undergoing a major cultural revival and participation in the Tribal Canoe Journey offers the opportunity to reconnect with long-held canoe paddling traditions.

Two Ainu interns, Masashi Kawakami and Akira Kikuchi, have spent the past eight weeks in Seattle, creating an exhibit and a study kit about Ainu culture for the Burke. Kawakami and Kikuchi will be part of the Ainu delegation to participate in the Canoe Journey.

Journey to Makah

The Tribal Canoe Journey is an annual event that celebrates the thriving canoe culture among Native communities along the Pacific Northwest Coast. Each year, a different nation hosts the event and thousands of people make the journey from their home to the host nation by way of ocean canoe. The Makah Nation, located at Neah Bay on the Olympic Peninsula, is hosting the 2010 Canoe Journey.

Starting in early July, over 100 canoes representing about 40 indigenous groups from Washington, Oregon, British Columbia, California, Hawaii, and New Zealand will begin their trip from their home bases to Neah Bay. Each group of paddlers will coordinate their trip to arrive at Neah Bay on Monday, July 19. From July 19 – 24, each tribe will take turns sharing their songs, dances, and stories.

The Ainu Association of Hokkaido will send up to eight paddlers to participate in the Canoe Journey. The week of July 12, the Ainu paddlers will join members of the Tulalip Tribes and other host communities as they launch a canoe from Suquamish, WA. The group will paddle north through the Puget Sound and Strait of Juan de Fuca on their way to Neah Bay, stopping at designated camp sites along the way to eat and sleep. Upon arrival at Neah Bay, the Ainu will be the first group to present their heritage to the other groups, as they will have traveled the farthest to participate in the Canoe Journey.

Support for this exchange has been provided by the Museums & Communities Collaboration Abroad (MCCA), which is a program of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the US Department of State in partnership with the American Association of Museums (AAM).

Photos: (top) Masashi Kawakami attends a canoe practice in preparation for the Tribal Canoe Journey; (bottom) Akira Kikuchi (left) and Masashi Kawakami, both Ainu interns who have spent the past 8 weeks in Seattle developing an exhibit about Ainu culture at the Burke Museum, stand in front of the Tulalip Tribes’ canoe at a recent paddling practice.

Ainu Interns Come to Burke

This post is a part of a series about a year-long cultural exchange the Burke Museum is leading between the Ainu Association of Hokkaido and six tribal groups in Washington: The Duwamish Tribe, The Makah Nation, The Suquamish Tribe, The Squaxin Island Tribe, The Tulalip Tribes, and The House of Welcome Long House at Evergreen State College. In 2008 the Ainu were formally recognized by Japan’s government as the nation’s “first peoples.”

Not long after a group of Burke staff and Northwest Coast tribal representatives returned from their trip to Japan to visit sites of Ainu cultural revitalization, two young Ainu men from Hokkaido arrived in Seattle to begin a four month internship at the Burke Museum.

The two Ainu interns, Akira Kikuchi, 24, and Masashi Kawakami, 27, arrived in Seattle on April 13 and will stay in the United States through July to learn museum curatorial skills that they can take home and share with the Ainu community. Akira and Masashi are among the first Ainu people to travel to the United States to learn about museum studies.

While here, Akira and Masashi will spend their time developing an educational kit about Ainu heritage that will be available for use by educators in Washington State through the Burke Box program. The two interns will also curate a small exhibit of Ainu cultural artifacts purchased by and gifted to the Burke Museum. Finally, Akira and Masashi will contribute to a documentary film about Ainu culture that is being produced through the Native Voices film program at the University of Washington.


In this photo, Masashi (left) and Akira (right) stand next to a collection of Ainu cultural objects that were recently acquired by the Burke Museum. The patterned robe in the foreground is called an attush. It is a man’s robe, woven by female relatives out of elm bark and cloth, to be worn on special occasions.

This exchange is supported by a grant from Museums & Communities Collaboration Abroad (MCCA), a program of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the US Department of State in partnership with the American Association of Museums (AAM).

Curator's Travel Journal: A Trip to Japan

This post is a part of a series about a year-long cultural exchange the Burke Museum is leading between the Ainu Association of Hokkaido and six tribal groups in Washington: The Duwamish Tribe, The Makah Nation, The Suquamish Tribe, The Squaxin Island Tribe, The Tulalip Tribes, and The House of Welcome Long House at Evergreen State College. In 2008 the Ainu were formally recognized by Japan’s government as the nation’s “first peoples.”

In December, the Ainu and Pacific Northwest cultural exchange began when a group of 10 Ainu delegates came to the United States to travel around the Northwest, meeting and learning from tribal representatives here. In March, 11 American travelers flew to the island of Hokkaido, Japan to visit sites of Ainu cultural revitalization. The excerpts below are from the travel journals of Burke staff members and organizers of this cultural exchange, Deana Dartt-Newton and Lisa Oliver. To read the full travel journal, visit the exchange’s Facebook page.

Day 1 - First Day in Hokkaido
Our day was spent in Sapporo City with our first stop at the Historical Museum of Hokkaido (pictured below). The museum opened in 1971 as a series of projects commemorating the centennial of Hokkaido although the Ainu were there thousands of years prior to the Japanese. In 1992, the museum's exhibits were revamped and Ainu artists were asked to commission art for the exhibitions and the museum is now working to create more Ainu exhibits. Our next stop was the Sapporo Ainu Culture Promotion Center. This center is the only museum where everything is made by Ainu people. The museum is hands-on so visitors can learn how to weave cattail mats, feel the embroidery on Ainu robes and hear the sounds from Ainu instruments.

Day 2- Trip to Shirao
Today we toured the Shiraoi Ainu Museum (pictured below). Our tour of the Ainu Museum took us through important Ainu traditions such as the “bear sending” ceremony. Just as the Pacific Northwest Coast Indians believe there are two worlds, the spirit world and the human world, so do the Ainu. In the Ainu hierarchy of Gods, Salmon is important but the Ainu of Shiraoi believe that the highest God is the Orca. Each Ainu family had an altar and believed that if the altar was not properly cared for, the gods would be angered and would not provide food for the village. The Ainu also believed that the gods took on the forms of animals. When the Ainu ate the animal it was sending the god back into the spirit world and the god would then provide the Ainu with a bountiful harvest.

Day 3 - Trip to Biratori and Mukawa
After a day of touring museums in Biratori, we headed to Mukawa's Mupet Hall, where we were greeted by a hall full of women dressed in traditional Ainu robes. We were escorted to our seats and waited for introductions. The Mukawa Ainu Cultural Preservation Society perform traditional Ainu dances and songs and teach these cultural traditions to the youth so that they can pass them down to future generations. They treated us with several dances and songs. When it came to the final dance all of us were invited to join. Each of us were given an Ainu robe to wear for the dance. It was truly an unforgettable experience!


Day 4 – Trip to Akan
It was a long journey from Mukawa to Lake Akan (pictured below). Our 4.5 hour drive took us through beautiful snow covered terrain where we saw red fox in the forest and hawks in the sky. When we arrived to Lake Akan we had lunch in a small restaurant in the Ainu kotan area. The Ainu kotan area is a section of land that the Ainu lease. On this land the Ainu can run restaurants, shops and promote Ainu culture without taxes. There are only 3 restrictions on who can lease the land. 1) you must be Ainu, 2) you must promote Ainu culture, 3) you must not allow Japanese people to lease in that area. Here in Akan we saw the swaying willow tree dance. The women, all with long black hair, bend and sway as they sing, flipping and swirling their hair in circles. It’s a striking display, and one we did not see in any other region.


Day 5- Trip to Shibetsu
Our first stop in Shibetsu was to the Shibetsu Municipal History Museum. Here we had a brief tour of the museum and artifacts that tell the history of the area. After our tour we went to the Shibetsu Fisheries Office where we were met by our friend Mr. Ogawa who was part of the delegation who visited Seattle in December. With tea and sweet treats the Fisheries Director talked at length about the salmon industry. Every year they release 100 million salmon from their hatcheries. Most of the salmon caught each year are sent to China where the salmon is processed and then shipped around the world. Only 200 people have fishing rights and (we were very surprised to hear) 60% are of Ainu descent. In order to fish you have to have inherited the fishing rights and be a member of the Fisheries Association.

Goodbye Hokkaido
Our trip to Hokkaido was an amazing experience, one that we will not soon forget. We met many warm and friendly people and learned more about the Ainu culture not only through song and dance but through the various museums we visited. Again, the similarities between the Ainu culture and the cultures of our group (Makah, Quinault, Chumash, Suquamish, Tulalip, Aleut and Chehalis) were numerous.

This exchange is supported by a grant from Museums & Communities Collaboration Abroad (MCCA), a program of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the US Department of State in partnership with the American Association of Museums (AAM).

A Trip to Japan…

A few months ago, we posted about a first-ever cultural exchange in Seattle with the indigenous people of Japan, known as the Ainu. Just last year, the Ainu were formally recognized by Japan’s government as Japan’s “first peoples,” and in December 2009, a group of Ainu delegates visited Washington State for the first part of their cultural exchange with several Native communities in this region.

This Friday, Burke Museum curators Deana Dartt-Newton and Robin Wright, will hop on a plane to Hokkaido, Japan with a special delegation of Puget Sound area Native Americans and the UW’s Native Voices film crew to visit the Ainu on their own turf for the second part of this exchange.

The group of 11 will tour Hokkaido’s outlying cultural museums, exchange information about traditional salmon, cedar, and whaling life ways of the Ainu, and explore Ainu cultural revival. The US delegation returns home on March 20, 2010.

On her way out the door, project director, Deana Dartt-Newton commented that, “We are anticipating the rich dialogue that started in December to deepen as we see firsthand the ways Ainu culture has survived and now experiences a resurgence, so similar to the experiences of Northwest Tribal cultures. My work, which looks at ways that museums define Native identity, will be enhanced by a look at historic Ainu representations and how those have changed over time. We are all very excited!”

This exchange has been funded by Museums & Communities Collaboration Abroad (MCCA), which is a program of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the US Department of State in partnership with the American Association of Museums.

Check back for photos from Japan on our Facebook page.

Posted by: MaryAnn Barron Wagner, Communications

Ainu delegates visit Burke for cultural exchange

This week, the Burke Museum welcomed a delegation of 10 members of the Ainu Association of Hokkaido for the first of three visits between Japan and the Pacific Northwest that will take place over the next 9 months as part of an exciting project called “Carrying Traditions Across the Waters of Time: Ainu and Pacific Northwest Cultural Collaborations.”

The central focus of this cultural exchange project is the shared efforts between indigenous people in Japan and the Pacific Northwest to revive ancient relationships to the sea and the canoe. The participants include members of the Suquamish, Duwamish, Tulalip, Makah, and Squaxin Island tribes of Washington State and the Hokkaido Ainu Association of Japan. Together, the participants will share cultural knowledge, broaden public awareness of environmental and social issues faced globally by Native peoples, and gain insight into museum practices in a tribal or inter-tribal setting.


This week’s visit by the Ainu delegation, whose 10 members range in age from 19 to 70 years old, marks the first time all of the participants in this cultural exchange have meet one another. The Ainu delegation will spend the week visiting tribal museums and cultural centers of the 5 partnering tribes from Washington. In March 2010, a group of representatives from the Pacific Northwest will travel to Japan to make similar visits to Ainu museums and cultural centers. Then, in July 2010, the Ainu delegation will return to Washington to participate in an annual tribal canoe journey, hosted by the Makah Tribe in Neah Bay.


Over the next 9 months, the Burke Blog will record the progress of the Ainu and Pacific Northwest Cultural Collaboration, but for the most current updates, follow the project on Facebook.

This exchange has been funded by Museums & Communities Collaboration Abroad (MCCA), which is a program of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the US Department of State in partnership with the American Association of Museums.

Photos: Visiting delegates from the Ainu Association of Hokkaido visited the Burke Museum on Monday morning for a welcome breakfast and a tour of the museum.