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Learning
about the Yurok of
Tsurai
Village
By ASHLEY
BAILEY,
The
In a life spent honoring
family and keeping traditions alive, prayer has become something vital
for Axel Lindgren III.
As the chairperson of the
Tsurai Ancestral Society, Lindgren has had experience using prayer to
help cool heated disagreements inside and outside of the Yurok tribal
lands in
The Humboldt County
Historical Society invited Lindgren, along with four of his children –
Mitchell, Gordon, Mary and Mariah – to speak about the Yurok’s
Tsurai (pronounced shur-eye)
A prayer opened the
discussion.
As Lindgren spoke, his
daughter Mary stood close by miming the words to herself.
When settlers moved into
Until the 1970s, Lindgren
said, the Tsurai village was privately owned, but it is now owned by the
city of
He said it has been a
priority in his family over the years to reacquire the ancestral lands
from
At the luncheon, Lindgren
recalled traditions in Yurok families, some closer to him than others.
“The Yuroks believe
everything’s a living thing,” he said, holding up a miniature model
of a dugout canoe. “That canoe has its own heart.”
There are a couple of
canoes built by his father, Lindgren said, that can be found at
Patrick’s Point State Park and the Trinidad Museum.
Mariah stood by in an
elaborate gown covered with beads, shells and nuts.
“We didn’t make them;
they would take years to make,” she said, joined by her sister Mary.
Rosemary Hunter, a board
member of the
“Hear how the abalone
kinkles?” she said as the girls made their way around the room.
“Each dress has its own song.”
Lindgren’s children did
a brush dance demonstration – the girls wearing traditional American
Indian regalia borrowed from the
“The brush dance is for
a sick child,” Lindgren said. “I don’t mean like the flu, but if
he has a demonic spirit causing him to act a certain way.”
Other traditions
weren’t sacred, but were done to make life easier for the village’s
inhabitants.
Some of the older tribal
members didn’t have too many teeth, Lindgren recalled, and had a hard
time eating the salmon caught by the younger Yuroks.
Their solution?
Grease bowls.
The hollowed pieces of
stone caught drippings from cooking salmon that were later given to the
elders. The elders then dipped their bread in the grease to make it more
manageable to eat.
The villagers seemed to
look out for one another, whether it be helping elders eat or by giving
those suffering hardship a place to live.
Lindgren said that if a
married couple had a sister whose husband had passed away, often the
sister would be taken into their home without question.
“They wouldn’t just
let her wander off with nowhere to go, but she’d have to work to earn
her keep,” he said.
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Source: http://eurekareporter.com/article/080210-learning-about-the-yurok