Coming this October to the Columbia River Maritime Museum, patrons will have the rare opportunity to learn about the maritime culture of the Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast with our new “Cedar and Sea” exhibit.

For centuries, the native people of the Pacific Coast have used a deep knowledge of their surrounding environment to harvest its natural wealth, developing sophisticated technologies that enabled them to create and maintain some of North America’s most complex and rich cultures, from Yakutat, Alaska, to Canada and down the coast to California.

“Cedar and Sea” will feature the voices of contemporary Indigenous artisans presenting their work as part of their living traditions, demonstrating resilience as they blend old and new tools, technologies, and knowledge to prosper in the face of continual threats to traditional lifeways.

The exhibit incorporates six first-person videos of native knowledge givers—individuals who cultivate and pass down important knowledge and practices through the generations—to offer an extremely meaningful and unique window into Indigenous lifestyles and traditions with which many museum guests may not be closely familiar.

The diverse videos from a wide range of tribes will give the exhibit an intensely personal flavor, leaving viewers with a relevant and tangible understanding of how tribal members today continue to use coastal lands and waters, along with the Pacific Ocean, to thrive as a culture. In the videos, the knowledge givers talk about their individual experiences and the special traditions and technologies passed down through different family members, as well as how they’re utilized in a modern context.

The videos will be accompanied by snapshots, quotes, and black-and-white photography, with the knowledge givers sharing about the input they’ve had on the “Cedar and Sea” exhibit.

Additionally, the exhibit will showcase a wide variety of tools and implements fashioned from stone, bone, shell, wood, and other natural materials. These artifacts represent thousands of years of innovation by coastal Indigenous peoples, as well as present-day materials and practices used by living descendants today. In total, there will be 166 objects in the exhibit, including a large canoe built by renowned Tla-o-qui-aht Elder and carver Joe Martin.

“Cedar and Sea” is the largest exhibit we’ve ever hosted at the Columbia River Maritime Museum, and it will encompass about one-third of our gallery space. We began fundraising for this exhibit several years ago, and the cost has been covered through generous donations and grant funding. Storyline Studio, out of Bothell, Washington, designed the exhibit and Three Dimensional Services (3DS), from Vancouver, British Columbia, will build various components.

While “Cedar and Sea” will change the way we share the existing museum space with visitors, a majority of our other well-known exhibits will still be available to the public—including “Crossing the Bar,” our weather green screen, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) wall. Plus, we will be able to expand and refine our offerings, thanks to the new space being added through our ongoing campus expansion.

Our museum team is excited about these upcoming additions and how we can increasingly serve the public with meaningful collections of maritime history, heritage and culture from around the Columbia River region.

The Columbia River Maritime Museum is located at 1792 Marine Dr. in Astoria. For more details about “Cedar and Sea” and to stay up to date with information about its opening, visit our website or call us at (503) 325-2323.