No wedding bell blues for native singer Katherine Paul

Few have as much to celebrate these days as Katherine Paul.

The daughter of local residents Kevin and Pat Paul is an acclaimed vocalist whose music was featured in a recent National Public Radio (NPR) interview with correspondent Ailsa Chang.

She’s also a newlywed.

And hers were no ordinary nuptials.

Katherine, 30, and Camas Logue, 31, both of Portland, were wed earlier this month on the banks of the Columbia River, each having arrived on tribal canoes, an 11-minute crossing in the picturesque shadow of snow covered Mount Hood.

It was while on his canoe that Camas formally asked permission of Kevin, a Swinomish Tribal Community Senator and La Conner School District carving teacher, to marry his daughter. Having received approval, Camas invited his bride-to-be to take the first step on their life’s journey.

“Katherine stepped from the Swinomish canoe into the Chinook canoe,” says Pat, a La Conner attorney. “The canoes joined together with paddles up and along that connection we went to the shore.”

Skipper Eric Day of the Swinomish canoe and his Chinook counterpart each asked permission to come ashore, a request granted by a descendant of Chief Tamulth of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde.

A Native American wedding ceremony followed, complete with blanket wrappings and vows exchanged on the beach.

Kevin honored the couple afterward by performing a wedding song.

The groom, a member of The Klamath Tribes, and the bride, whose group, Black Belt Eagle Scout, has released a new album, were then honored with a reception feast of sockeye salmon. Ten of the fish were donated by Swinomish Tribal Community Senate Chairman Brian Cladoosby, Pat says.

The chairman was part of a large Swinomish and La Conner entourage that made the trip to Portland.

“A hundred and seventy-five people were invited and they, in turn, invited people,” says Pat.

Nearly a year went into planning the wedding. A couple of months into the process the Pauls attended a function in Alaska along with Day, who serves with Kevin on the Tribal Senate and is active with the Swinomish Canoe Family.

“We asked Eric if he would be interested in participating in the ceremony,” says Pat. “He said he would.”

Not only did Day skipper the Swinomish canoe in Portland, he also trailered it from the reservation to the wedding site.

The ceremony was of great interest among the general public in the Portland area, given Katherine’s celebrity status there.

“She gets a lot of media attention,” her mom notes, with restrained yet justifiable pride.

This month’s NPR coverage, which focused on Katherine’s and the band’s melodic sounds, had already created quite a buzz. Entitled “At The Party With My Brown Friends,” [sidebar] the group’s album is a mix of cutting edge social commentary and the heartfelt love of a daughter for her family conveyed through music clearly influenced by Native American pow-wows.

The track “You’re Me and I’m You,” for instance, is a tribute to Pat.

Katherine has long credited her family for instilling in her a love of music.

“I guess I was just always surrounded by music,” she told Chang, a reflection NPR writer Dave Blanchard included in his print coverage of the radio interview. “My family had a drum group. We would host pow-wows and I think for me music is just a way of life. It’s how we express ourselves. It’s how we express our spirituality and how we love our culture.”

Chang’s session with Katherine reveals a poised young woman firmly committed to her art and intent on making an impact wherever life takes her.

For now, that’s Portland. And has been for quite some time.

“When she was 16 and in high school,” Pat recalls, “she convinced us to allow her to go to rock-n-roll camp for girls in Portland. That’s when she decided to go to college and live in Portland.”

And, now, be married there.

The Pauls look forward to the day when Camas and Katherine move here.

“I know at some point in the future,” says Pat, “that she wants to come back home and build a house and recording studio.”

Were that to happen, it would be music to the ears of her many local fans.