Samish Tribe holds first weaving retreat to unite tribal citizens

On a clear Saturday at the Samish Island Campground and Retreat Center near Bow, Skagit County, Isabel Fernando wrapped rows of wool on a wooden loom, mapping out the design of her tunic. Using a twine stitch, she twisted colors of red and black – representing health and strength – into a herringbone pattern. The room radiated the gentle warmth of the sun outside the window, and reverberated with the sounds of children’s laughter and older tribal members sharing meals together.

For Fernando, a graduate student in anthropology at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, spending the weekend at the Samish Indian Nation’s first-ever weaving retreat in March was an opportunity to fly home and visit her relatives. Weaving was the “tether” that kept her connected to her Indigenous ancestry, she said, which includes the Upper Skagit and Samish peoples.

The retreat “is a type of connection you don’t get when you’re weaving alone,” said Fernando, whose master’s thesis explores traditional Scottish and Coast Salish weaving practices and their connection to her identity. “And I really appreciate that because it feels like how weaving is supposed to be done. … It’s really nice to be in community hearing from people and learning different techniques.”

From March 20 to 22, the Samish Indian Nation brought together tribal citizens from across the region and beyond to learn traditional Samish weaving techniques, with around 40 participants making wool skirts and tunics, as well as cedar hats and headbands.

The weekend retreat comes at a time when the Samish Tribe – which lacks an official federal reservation – is increasingly “braiding together so much of our community that’s been scattered for so long” and strengthening those ties with one another through culture and tradition, said Leslie Eastwood, a retired general manager of the Samish Indian Nation and a wool weaving instructor at the retreat. Although Eastwood has taught many wool weaving classes with the tribe, they were usually only one-day classes in the afternoon, she said.

“It’s lovely to create that place where nobody’s pressured to fight traffic to get to Samish, and then they don’t have to worry about getting back home and making dinner when they’re done,” Eastwood said of the weaving retreat. “All of that is happening for them, and they’ve got a place to stay that’s comfortable. … I think it’s re-creating, for our community, part of the way we lived with one another prior to colonization.”

The Samish Indian Nation has an extensive, arduous history of trying to gain federal recognition and reservation land. Although the Samish Tribe was among the original signees of the first draft of the 1855 Treaty of Point Elliott – which maintained Puget Sound-area tribes’ hunting and fishing rights and created designated reservation lands – it did not receive its own permanent reservation. Many Samish citizens refused to relocate to other federal reservations, such as Lummi, Swinomish and Tulalip reservations. Instead, they retained what traditions they could in their ancestral territories including Samish, Guemes, eastern Lopez, Cypress and Fidalgo islands.

In the 1960s, the Samish Tribe was excluded from a list of federally recognized tribes due to a clerical error, which barred access to federal funding and resources, including education and welfare. The lack of recognition also prevented the tribe from moving land they had acquired into federal trust, a classification that allows a tribe to govern its land without being subject to state laws, and entitles them to federal services such as land use exemptions and housing support. The Samish Tribe regained formal recognition by the U.S. government in 1996, after a long legal battle, but it still does not have its own reservation. Today, the tribe has more than 2,000 living enrolled citizens, Eastwood said.

Large in-person gatherings are especially meaningful for the Samish Indian Nation, whose citizens now live in Washington state and areas as far away as New Zealand, said Patricia Breckenridge, a cultural specialist with the tribe’s Chelángen Department, which works to create a cohesive tribal community with strong cultural ties.

“Because we don’t have a reservation, we don’t get to live that community lifestyle like other tribes where they can just gather in the building and everybody’s there,” Breckenridge said. “So when we come up with these types of classes and things, we really have to go above and beyond and think about all aspects. We have so many people that travel to come and be with us at these events, so we wanted to add on to our camps or retreats that we do.”

To forge connections among its scattered members, the Samish Indian Nation hosts several monthly events for Samish households, including online language and crafting classes and elder gatherings. In 2009, the Samish Tribe held its first Camp Samish, which has since become an annual summer camp on Samish Island for tribal citizens across age groups.

Likewise, the tribe hopes to make the weaving retreat an event that happens every year, at the very least, due to wide interest, said Breckenridge, who added that she feels most fulfilled seeing her people come together to learn about their traditional practices.

“When we’re planning something, we’re always working seven generations ahead,” Breckenridge said. “That, to me, is very important, that seven generations from me in the future are able to look back and know where they come from.”

On that recent retreat Saturday, Pat Dunn, a Samish elder and instructor, floated around the venue to help participants weave cedar hats. The thin cedar pieces, he said, took over a year to prepare, from cleaning the outer bark pulled from a tree, to rolling it up and soaking it in water.

“This is how our grandparents, our great-great-grandparents and great-great-great-grandparents did things,” said Dunn, who has taught cedar weaving for eight years. “They went out, pulled their bark, made their baskets, made their cooking materials for it. … And so we’re trying to instill in our tribe the practices that we used to do to keep them active.”

Weaving a wide-brimmed hat, Jon Barrett stuck pins through cedar strips and occasionally sprayed them with water to keep them pliable. Barrett, who was born and raised in Bellingham, learned how to weave for the first time at the retreat. An enrolled tribal citizen since 2022, Barrett said he moved to Anacortes to take a job with the tribe and be closer to Samish people and culture.

Having attended an online drum-making class and two language classes prior, Barrett said the weaving retreat allowed him to enjoy picking up a new skill with fellow community members.

“When I became aware of this opportunity, I thought, ‘Oh yeah, I want to learn how to do that,’” said Barrett, who is also part of the Samish Canoe Family, a volunteer group with the tribe that promotes Salish Sea customs such as canoe paddling and song. “And there’s a practical reason to want to make a cedar hat. It’s cultural, ceremonial and practical because these provide shade and protection from rain, and so that’s nice when you’re paddling in a canoe.”

When Eastwood, the retired general manager of the tribe, first learned to twine and twill in weaving classes during the early 2000s, “I was immediately bitten,” she said. Back then, Eastwood said, she enjoyed the unified, symmetrical motions of her hands as she wove from top to bottom.

At times while developing a new project, she said, her ancestors who practiced weaving for centuries come to mind. In Samish culture, it is commonplace for citizens to give the first cultural garment they make to a community member as a way to “thank the spirit of whatever weavers in our ancestry have that gift,” Eastwood said.

“That, for me, is a big part of … our identity as Samish: the people who stand up and give – the giving people,” Eastwood said. “That’s such a deep-rooted part of who we are that I love, for folks that are coming home for the first time to get that, and to have folks embrace that and carry that on.”