Maya Lin’s Confluence Revisited 2020

We revisited Cape Disappointment (it should have the native name of Cape Kais). This site marks the confluence of the Columbia River and the Pacific Ocean. It is one of the most rugged places to navigate on the planet. We saw the power of the currents as the Columbia River smashed into the Pacific Ocean. Out there in the background. Hard to catch the immense drama.

For those of you unfamiliar with The Confluence Project, this is one site of six ( five completed) along the Columbia River, celebrating and marking various aspects of native life and loss as well as using the Lewis and Clark journals to track extinctions since they came through in 1803-5. Maya Lin was lured into accepting this multi year commission by Native elders who saw the movie about Maya Lin’s memorial to the Vietnam war and believed she would be the perfect person to commemorate the native losses since Lewis and Lark came through.

I have blog posts about three of the other sites here and here.

and here.

Lin is particularly tracking extinctions, a project she began long ago. Here is her incredible website “What is Missing” about extinctions.

We were there in 2006 for the dedication at the completion of the

site, when Maya Lin was there with her family as well as the Chinook peoples both supporting and protesting.

Maya Lin with her daughters at the cutting table 2006

We went again in 2008 and camped in a tent. This year we stayed in a yurt.

The site has now filled with grasses and trees where before there was empty dirt, ( that was replacing parking lots and toilets). Maya Lin cleared the vista at so called Waikiki Beach and made it more natural.

amphitheater in 2006 at time of dedicaiton

amphitheater 2008 some green has returned

amphitheater 2020 Entirely grass filled field

When the Chinook peoples first dedicated the site before work began, they sang a beautiful song that so impressed the artist that she changed the design of the piece. Her original plan was to create concrete planks leading to the sea with inscriptions from the journals of Lewis and Clark documenting their measurements, names, and distances between places on the planks.

end of original walkway at Waikiki beach

sample of texts by Lewis and Clark 2008 now 2020 almost entirely rubbed out

As a result of being overwhelmed by the beauty of the dedication song, she added a second path, a winding, oyster path. It also has planks, but much more subtle and spread out. That path marks the original shoreline before jetties were added to aid navigation and reduce ship wrecks.

The Chinook people’s prayer was

We call upon the earth our planet home

with its beautiful depths and soaring heights

its vitality and abundance of life

and together we ask that it

Teach Us and Show us the Way

We call upon the mountains

Saddle Mountain, and Wakiakun Mountain,

The Willapa Hills and the summits of intense silence

and we ask that they

Teach us and Show us the Way

We call upon the waters that rim the earth

the waters of our great Iyagatthlmath RIver

The waters of Willapa Bay and all the waters

the flowing of our rivers and dreams,

the water that falls upon us

And We ask that they

Teach Us and Show us the Way

We Call Upon the Land which grows our food

The Nurturing Soil that Sustains our Lives

And we ask that it

Teach us and Show us the Way

We call upon the creatures of the Fields and

Forests and the Seas,

To Teach Us and Show us the Way

We call upon the great cedar trees

Reaching strongly to the sky with earth in their roots

and the heavens in their branches

The Cedar tree, the keeper of all knowledge and

we ask them to teach us and show us the way

We call upon the creatures of the fields and the forests and the seas,

our brothers and sisters

Little Wolf, Mulak the Elk and Mawich the Deer

Ch’akch’ak the Eagle,

the Great Whales, and the Sturgeon, and the Salmon People

Who share our Chinook Waters

And we ask that they

Teach us and Show us the Way

We call upon all those who have lived on this earth

our ancestors and our friends

Who have dreamed the best for future generations

and upon whose lives our lives are built and with thanksgiving

we call upon them to

Teach Us and Show us the Way

And lastly we call upon all that we hold most sacred

the prescience and the power of the Great Spirit which flows through all the universe to be with us

To teach us and show us the way.

November 18, 2005

The winding prayer filled path leads to a Sacred Circle constructed of drift wood reinforced to stand up and the natural woods that have grown up around this amazing stump.