Centerpiece Completes Bandon Memorial, Jan. 12

A memorial to a historic Indian village is finally complete with the recent addition of a centerpiece by two Native American artists. The sculpture is the focal point of the Nasomah Memorial Garden in Bandon’s Old Town area. The garden commemorates the Coquille Indian village that stood on the site. Shirod Younker, a Coquille Indian Tribe member, and Tony A. Johnson, a member of the Chinook Nation, created the sculpture from a cedar root wad. Embedded in the roots are five carved objects of cultural significance: an adze handle, a mussel shell, a fishing spear point, an awl, and dentalium (a shell traditionally used as currency by coastal tribes). All the objects are carved from cedar and are painted ochre red, a color sacred to the Coquille and other tribes. “Our concept was to create a monument that is both educational and sacred,” the artists wrote in an accompanying narrative. The sculpture aims to teach about the sacredness of the location and of the objects buried with the historic village, they explained. The Western red cedar root is upturned, looking as though it grew around the buried artifacts and then was uprooted by coastal winds. The artists say it should serve as an altar where visitors can “pray, reflect or offer gifts to the spirits that have existed there since time immemorial.” The sculpture’s name, in the Coquille Tribe’s Miluk language, means “Gifts for the Spirits to Take to the Land of the Dead.” The Miluk name can’t be written accurately in the English alphabet, but its approximate pronunciation is “wuh-(L)thee-ta’ow.” The memorial garden was begun in 2013 after a sidewalk project uncovered evidence of the buried village. It includes paving stones in a traditional basketry pattern, culturally significant native plants, and pieces of blueschist from nearby Tupper Rock, which the Coquilles revere as “Grandmother Rock.” Facing a Dec. 31 deadline to complete the centerpiece, the two artists looked for an appropriate root wad throughout 2015. Finally, on Dec. 16, Johnson learned that an ideal specimen had washed ashore at Washington’s Shoalwater Bay Indian Reservation. The centerpiece was installed on Dec. 30.