Swinomish Days return after three years

In one of his hit songs, the late entertainer Prince urged fans to party like it was 1999.

At Swinomish last weekend everybody was fine with partying like it was 2019.

For the first time in three years the popular Swinomish Days summer festival, a celebration of Coast Salish history and culture, was back on the calendar.

"We're grateful to be able to host Swinomish Days 2022," Swinomish Senator and Tribal Cultural Events Director Aurelia Bailey said beforehand. "It's been a long three years."

The four-day gathering, Aug. 11-14, which drew participants and visitors from throughout the Pacific Northwest, kicked off Thursday with dinner, music and dancing at the tribal smokehouse.

Starting Friday, there were canoe races, three-on-three outdoor basketball, stick games, arts and crafts booths and selection of tribal youth royalty.

One missing ingredient was the traditional pow-wow. Given uncertainty earlier this year over what the status of COVID-19 would be this summer, it wasn't possible to line up a host drum and head dancers in time for Swinomish Days.

On Saturday, spectators on both sides of Swinomish Channel enjoyed the races. During the 10-and-under division race, a team tipped its canoe after rounding the south buoy in front of the Swinomish dock. A harbor patrol on duty, comprised of two boats and a jet-ski, was able to quickly pull all paddlers out of the water.

Jerome Toby and Alethia Edwards coordinated the double-elimination basketball brackets, which provided competition for players 12-and-under, 15-and-under, 18-and-under and 19-and-older.

The stick games, played under the large white tents at John K. Bob Ball Park, continued through Sunday evening, the accompanying drumming and singing clearly audible on the town side of the channel.

Always pwopular, stick games have a long history and involve strategic guessing. The object is for one team to successfully hide sticks, often called bones, from the guessers of another team. The team holding sticks will sing, drum and shake rattles to distract and confuse their rivals, causing them to lose sticks with wrong guesses.

Luckily, as far as the big picture is concerned, perfect weather and declining COVID-19 numbers took the guess work out of whether Swinomish Days would be held as scheduled this year.