Roughly dressed block of cedar in preparation for carving. Source: flickr.com
The Stillaguamish Tribe live along the Stillaguamish River basin (map) of Northwestern Washington State. They are a tribe which missed out on any reservation land in the 1850s and have struggled somewhat at times to maintain cultural identity as a diaspora. Regaining Federal Status in 1976 was important to the tribe of about 200 members, as was 2009’s first “First Salmon” ceremonies in a generation.
An interesting and encouraging development seems to be the recent carving of the first Stillaguamish river canoe in a century. While the larger dugout canoes (still being carved) of the outer coast nations, such as the Haida and Nuu-chah-nulth, are better known emblems of the Northwest Coast as a whole, these river canoes were equally important to the inland waterway and riverine nations of the Fraser Valley and Puget Sound.
According to an informative and well-written article in the Everett HeraldNet, the story starts with an interesting origin of the cedar log itself.
Northwest Coast Archaeology 