TOKELAND — Despite his relatively young age, Earl Davis has lived one of life’s great lessons — things are not always as they appear.
Davis, 27, the heritage director for the Shoalwater Bay Indian Tribe, is not what you might expect upon first meeting.
With freckles, fair skin and a carved physique, he looks more like a bodybuilder or bodyguard than a cultural liaison and budding three-dimensional artist.
“I get that a lot, especially in my job, because this field is actually very small. Every tribe, maybe, has one or two people (in their heritage department), and most of them are elders.”
Now in looking at Davis, who grew up in Westport and graduated from Ocosta High School, it might not surprise you that he’s an ex-Marine, though even that belies his laid-back and soft-spoken manner.
“It was good for me,” Davis said of his four-year stint in the Corps. “I wanted to get out of the Harbor as soon as I could. As a teenager, I couldn’t wait to leave. Five days after I graduated from high school, I was in boot camp.”
That was in San Diego. His tour of duty would also take him to far-flung locales such as Japan, Thailand, Kuwait and, of course, Iraq, where he was part of the spearhead that advanced on and captured Baghdad.
A corporal, he served as an infantry squad leader in Iraq during a five-month stay complete with firefights and historic moments.
“All those famous … photos of them pulling down the statue of Saddam. I was a block away watching that. We were some of the first ones into Baghdad.”
Those four years were an eye-opener.
“I figured I was going to make a career out of the Marines,” he said. “But I just decided one day that I wanted to see what else was out there.
“I saw the rest of the world and decided home wasn’t so bad,” he said with a smile.
The son of Bruce and Cathy Davis of Westport, he returned to work for the Shoalwater Tribe in Tokeland, where he spent many of his childhood days as his father fished out of the marina, his mom worked at the cannery and his grandmother resided there.
He lives there today with his wife of eight years, Kristal, who he started courting in high school, and their two boys, 6-year-old Dakota and Aiden, 2.
After his discharge, he landed a job with the Tribe’s social services department as a probation officer and case monitor.
“It was a pretty good fit for just coming out of the Corps,” Davis said.
While serving in that position, Davis also started volunteering to work with the children of the Tribe, teaching native craft classes on the weekends.
Those efforts eventually helped land him the job as cultural director, when it opened.
“Originally, I just wanted to volunteer working with the kids because I’ve always had interest in the heritage and the culture and stuff ever since I was a kid,” Davis said. “So I wanted to come back and try to help out any way I could. That’s when I started volunteering — putting together classes on Saturdays. It snowballed, and one thing led to another.”
He’s been in his current job for three years, working out of a small portable, solitary office building just down the road from the tribal center.
Davis says his duties mostly comprise “researching everything about our heritage and culture and trying to blend it with the modern age and day and keep it alive.”
What that entails varies from day to day.
“It could be anything from working on the canoe project I have going now to researching language to doing reports for people, who are doing construction projects, that are required for federal funding.”
And a little over a year ago, Davis decided part of his required job set should include a firsthand knowledge of native carving skills and arts.
“I started seriously carving about a year and a half ago,” Davis said. “Most of it, was I wanted to bring it back, so I picked up a book and a piece of wood and said, ‘O.K. I gotta figure out how to do this so I can teach it,”’ he added with a chuckle.
Davis uses traditional wood and steel hand tools for most of his work.
“About as modern as I get is roughing out things on the bandsaw and using a chainsaw to cut out blocks,” he said.
A visit from acclaimed Quinault artist Randy Capoeman, who died last September at age 51, opened Davis’ eyes, both literally and figuratively.
“He showed me a couple of things,” Davis said of the brief mentorship, “and I don’t know what happened, but it was really weird, because he just showed me a handful of things and overnight it clicked … I didn’t just see a block of wood anymore.”
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