Written in Stone (18 page)

In my first year as a fifth-grade teacher at Taholah Elementary, my students asked me why there was never a book about them. We had a long conversation about why it was important to them. That conversation was the genesis of my life as a writer, not just of this book but all of them. My first and most heartfelt thanks goes to those children named at the be ginning of the book. I learned so much more from you than I ever taught.

I was very fortunate in those first years of my teaching career to be mentored by some of the most amazing women I have ever met. They not only showed me how to be a community leader and professional woman in the world, but also modeled the kind of spouse and mother and grandmother I hoped to become. Thank you, Pearl
Capoeman-Baller, Crystal Sampson, Kathy Kowoosh Law, and Veronica “Mice” James. Kathy and Mice were kind enough to help me find reliable cultural research, make suggestions about key details in the narrative, and verify the Quinault language words.

I am grateful to the entire community in Taholah, who welcomed me so warmly. As a relative newcomer to the continent and a descendant of orphans, it was a revelation to spend time among people who have lived on the same ground for thousands of years, in walking distance of all their relatives, with family stories reaching back generations. You made me curious about my own heritage, which has made my own family’s life immeasurably richer in music and stories and dancing.

The resumption of whaling was a key inspiration for this story, and I am grateful to the Makah Nation for having kept their whaling history alive for all the generations it took for the whales to recover from near extinction by industrial whaling. Thank you to everyone who worked so hard to restore whaling rights to the Makah and to all who labor in the vineyard of self-determination of natural resources for Native people. Your gain in control of fishery, forestry, agricultural, and mineral rights is an opportunity for us all to learn alternatives to managing the world around us.

My most vivid childhood memory of a school field
trip was the one my class took to Ariel, Washington, to hear the stories of Chief Lelooska—a renowned carver and artist, the adopted son of Chief James Aul Sewide of the Kwakiutl. We were welcomed into a firelit cedar longhouse, blessed with eagle down, and entertained with numerous stories. Each tale was accompanied by drumming and dancers in elaborately carved and animated masks and button blankets. It was living history at its finest, and it made a deep impression on me. I am grateful that Chief Lelooska kept his promise to his elders not to take the stories to the grave with him but to share them with coming generations. I am even more grateful to find that nearly twenty years after his death, Lelooska’s brother Chief Tsungani and the Lelooska Foundation are carrying on this valuable work for a new generation of schoolchildren.

I am indebted to my parents, who are unable to this day to drive past a museum of any kind and not stop for a visit. They nurtured a habit of inquiry that has served me well. I am grateful to the many people who preserved and recorded the culture of the Pacific Northwest tribes for future generations. Thank you to my editor, Jim Thomas, for listening so generously, and to the entire team at Random House, who have been so supportive in giving voice to communities that are easy to overlook.

Thank you to Andrea Burke, who shared her thoughts
on author notes, and to her colleagues, the school librarians of the Beaverton school district, who provided me with a childhood full of books. They continue to provide my own children with all the books they need, and wonderful library programming as well. We are particularly grateful for the Newbery Clubs, the Oregon Reader’s Choice Awards, and the Oregon Battle of the Books.

Most of all, thank you to my husband, Bill, and our four children, who make room in our lives for stories.

ROSANNE PARRY
spent her first years as a teacher in Taholah, Washington, on the Quinault Indian reservation. There she learned to love the taste of alder-smoked Blueback salmon, the cold mists of the rain forest, the sounds of the ocean, and the rhythm of a life that revolved around not the clock and the calendar but the cycle of the salmon running up the river and returning to the ocean. While there she never met a child who could not tell her a story—usually one with a monster of epic proportions. The writer she became has everything to do with the people she came to cherish and the land between the Pacific and the Olympics, where stories seemed to grow out of the earth all around her, tall and sturdy as cedars.

To learn more, please visit
RosanneParry.com
.