Day Twelve:


Bobby White took us to see one of the projects Coeur d'Alene was working on which is called the West Fork Lake Creek Stream and Wetland Project, they started working on it in 2009 and finished in 2011. The land they were using is owned by two citizens whom are Judy and Glen Ruark they let the Coeur d'Alene do their project in their backyard, they let complete strangers into their land... they are great people that believe in justice. We took a tour accompanied by Stephanie Hallock whom is a engineer and a biologist, she walked us through the backyard and gave us facts about the construction. she took us need a pile of regular rocks or so I thought they were but Stephanie explained how they are a native rock pit basically broken rocks in a pile. and took us to the stream and she told us that they built that, the stream led to a arch clover which is used to let fish pass, fish are very important to the Indian culture so it's important that fish have safe travels. After Stephanie was done showing us around we headed out to Culture and Language department to meet up with Caryl Dean Swan and Leanne Campbell, they took us into the storage room where they keep everything from the late 1915 to now, it's amazing how much they have saved. they have books, photographs, voice records, clothes, furniture, baskets, bones, and rocks. they are collaborating with Washington State University and have sent them 10 to 15 boxes of voice records so they can transfer everything into CD's on in a thumb drive. the Moccasins they have stored are so beautiful the bead work done is astonishing and looks difficult..

After a long day of walking by the river and almost getting stung by hornet's to looking at ancient artifacts we arrived back to Coeur d'Alene Restoration Cite and met Angelo Vitalic he is the Fisheries Program Manager, were able to carve a canoe, a very special canoe actually because the wood used was cinder wood which was donated to the Coeur d'Alene tribe, every five years they cut Cider wood and they only cut five trees down and Coeur d'Alene was given one of those five tress and that to me was special. The whole group helped shave the canoe so now how I see it is when ever it's completely done and sold to an individual every ones spirit will be riding in the waters with the canoe.