State arts commission adds award highlighting Indigenous artists

Indigenous artists who are working to preserve and continue traditional practices now have a category in the annual Governor’s Arts and Heritage Awards.

Philip H. Red Eagle is the first recipient of Washington State Arts Commission’s Tribal Arts and Heritage Award. The 79-year-old is one of many Indigenous leaders who worked to revive the tradition of tribal canoe journeys in the Pacific Northwest.

Red Eagle said this award means a lot to him.

“It was a very big surprise because I wasn’t looking for reward — or awards — for the work that I’ve been doing,” he said. “It was a necessity for me.”

Red Eagle and his late friend, Tom Heidlebaugh, got the idea for a youth canoe journey in the early ’90s after watching a healing ceremony that involved canoes.

“This was the element that we needed, was the canoe, to teach our young people,” Red Eagle said.

The youth canoe journey eventually led to the current annual event in the Pacific Northwest involving multiple tribes.

Cheryl Wilcox, manager for the arts commission’s Tribal Cultural Affairs Program, said the goal of the new award is to highlight artists who are keeping tribal practices alive.

“It’s not all about just restoring what was taken,” she said. “It’s about how do we revitalize that and move this forward now — because we’re still living and we’re still in this community, and we want to have an impact going forward.”

Wilcox said Red Eagle is the first recipient because of his work to keep the canoe journey focused on tribal culture.

This year’s tribal canoe journey was from north of Vancouver, British Columbia, to Puyallup, Washington.