‘Playing Indian’: Napavine Festival’s Princess Napawinah Draws Critique

The City of Napavine welcomes Interstate 5 travelers with a sign off Exit 72: “Welcome to Napavine: for a day, or for a lifetime.”

The sign was erected by the Napavine Funtime Festival nonprofit. Fifty years ago, the festival was founded by a junior chamber of commerce club, the Jaycees. Two of the celebration’s founders, Jerry and Eileen Owens, are the reason it’s still around. 

Both are around 80 years old. The married couple's Facebook pleas for more volunteers are rarely answered. 

After 50 years of working on it, Eileen Owens said she was disappointed — sick to her stomach, even — to hear that an element of the tradition sparked backlash. Like many other annual celebrations in Lewis County communities, the funtime festival has a royalty court. 

Its star, “Princess Napawinah,” wears a Native American-esque costume, with a headdress of feathers, braids, a beaded, faux-leather dress and a sash that states her title. Behind her on parade floats, a faux-leather teepee. Sometimes, she’s surrounded by hand-painted posts meant to look like totem poles.

Usually, the princess is a 13- to 15-year-old who lives in Napavine. This year, nobody signed up. Owens said a group of girls who were interested in the royalty court this year will be away at a basketball camp. 

But it’s the festival’s 50th year and Jerry and Eileen Owens want to go big. On a Napavine community Facebook page, they invited all 49 past Princess Napawinahs to be the parade’s grand marshals.

One comment, which has since been taken down by a page administrator, asked that the organizers “celebrate Napavine, it’s a great community,” while removing the Native American theme. 

In an interview with The Chronicle, Owens said she was surprised the 50-year tradition was offensive to anyone. She responded on the Facebook page, “our princesses have always dressed in costumes and no one has ever complained.” 

On June 27, a change.org petition to end or modify the Princess Napawinah custom was started by Tiera Garrety, a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation. As of July 4, it had 264 signatures. The festival also earned criticism from a spiritual leader and junior historian with the Cowlitz Indian Tribe.

“Every single item associated with the princess is incredibly culturally inappropriate and inaccurate,” Garrety writes in the petition, later adding, “Whether those affiliated with the Princess Napawinah pageant recognize this or not, their ‘tradition’ actively harms surrounding native communities and people because it continues racist stereotypes.”

When told about the petition, Owens noted there will not be a new Princess Napawinah this year, regardless.

Up until last year, the Funtime Festival nonprofit posted signs with a Peter-Pan style, Tomahawk-holding Indian caricature. 

Once concern was “obvious” on social media this year, Napavine Mayor Shawn O’Neill said, the signs were banned from being posted on city property. City government isn’t affiliated with the Funtime Festival, and Napavine, like all municipalities, is mandated to be nondiscriminatory.

Staying far away from controversy and partisan politics, O’Neill said, is what makes city government run well.

“My political party is Napavine. We’ve always been a city that welcomes anyone. We don’t get involved (in politics), which makes it hard to confront this kind of issue. You’ve got these people who are volunteering their time,” O’Neill said, later adding, “It’s not about hurting feelings or being ‘woke.’”

The Napavine Funtime Festival this year, the mayor said, will include the Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation’s “Miss Chehalis” float. 

“We hope everyone welcomes the Chehalis Tribe just the same as anyone else,” O’Neill said.

Turkey Feathers

Chehalis Tribal Member Mary Dupuis has family history in the Upper Chehalis River Basin — including the Newaukum River area, which includes Napavine. Dupuis earned a doctorate in Indigenous development and advancement after her 200-page thesis, “A History of the Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation.”

Dupuis was critical of Princess Napawinah. On the Facebook posts, she asked the event organizers to change the princess’ costume and float backdrop. To implement these changes, she said, Princess Napawinah could even keep her name.

She recommended the princess wear a prom-style dress. Prom or formal wear dresses are donned by other Lewis County pageant winners and festival royalty, including Miss Lewis County, the Morton Loggers’ Jubilee Queen, the Lewis County Dairy Ambassador and royalty for the Onalaska Harvest Festival and Winlock Egg Days.

Dupuis’ daughter is Tiera Garrety, who created the change.org petition. 

In an interview with The Chronicle, Dupuis said her concern was not with Eileen and Jerry Owens’ intentions, nor the festival, just the princess costume and float.

“I believe that (Eileen Owens) is coming from a place where she really does believe it’s honoring (Native Americans),” Dupuis said. 

Nonetheless, Dupuis said native “costumes” worn by non-native people are problematic because they erase the history of authentic native regalia. 

In native cultures where people do traditionally wear headdresses, she said for example, they represent an earned honor and almost exclusively are worn by men. Other items of regalia symbolize overcoming challenges or reaching certain milestones in life, she said. 

“We’re not just putting it on because we’re playing Indian,” Dupuis said, later adding, “If we don't put women in headdresses, then it's offensive to see somebody that doesn't understand the ceremony or the meaning behind a headdress just throwing on something they made out of turkey feathers.”

It’s not that every individual, entertainment-based depiction of Native Americans is offensive on its own, she said. Taken all together, though, Dupuis said these depictions create a “Pan-Indian” concept — essentially, mixing local culture with other native cultures across the United States, despite how different they may actually be.

“When you talk to the people who are being ‘honored,’ and they tell you that it’s not honoring, I think that’s where the opinion should count the most,” Dupuis said.

Dupuis asked, hypothetically, what would happen if she made a caricature of a white, 80-year-old woman with gray hair, glasses and a walker, put it on a T–shirt and named it “Eileen.”

“Maybe the first time I do it, she might laugh. But then, if I do it every time I see her, she’s going to get annoyed, eventually, and she’s not going to feel like it honors her, you know?” Dupuis said. “She would have an opinion in that and she would expect … me to be respectful of her opinion.”

‘Was She a Real Person? We Don’t Know?’

In 1973, the Napavine Funtime Festival was created by Eileen Owens, Jerry, who is a quarter Cherokee, and two “full-blooded Cherokee Indians,” she said. One of the two, Owens recalled, was dressed in a gunny sack and crowned as Princess Napawinah. 

Owens said she learned about Napawinah as a real historical figure from a member of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe 50 years ago. 

The Napavine Historical Society had records about Napawinah that were accompanied by a painting depicting her in a headdress similar to what is still used for the costume. The caption of the painting reads: “An Indian Princess: Crowned Queen Napawyna of the Newaukum Tribe, Presented by J.W. Cutting in 1872.” The painting previously hung in Napavine City Hall.

Cutting is said to have founded the town of “Napawyna,” which later became Napavine. 

According to Owens, the girl was the daughter of a chief, and Owens speculated that either she was named after Napavine or Napavine was named after her.

Others, including the Lewis County tourism website, say the town’s name comes from the Cowlitz word for small prairie, “Napavoon.” 

“Was she a real person in history? We don't know,” wrote Tanna Engdahl, a Cowlitz tribal elder and junior historian who holds the title of the tribe’s spiritual leader, in an email about Princess Napawinah. “If real, she could have been any tribal person from any of nearby tribes: Cowlitz, Chehalis, Nisqually or even a coastal tribe if one follows the Chehalis River.” 

The concept of royalty, Engdahl said, was brought to the Americas by Europeans. There was no equivalent in the Cowlitz Tribe. 

“The ‘Princess Napawinah’ portrayal in the summer festival is not Cowlitz-related in any way that we are aware of,” Engdahl said. “If the princess was Cowlitz and historically accurate figure, she said, she’d wear finely-woven cedar clothing. In the summer, that would be the equivalent of a mini-skirt, Engdahl said, and nothing above the waist. 

The current Princess Napawinah garb clearly resembles the 1872 painting, so the tradition didn’t come out of nowhere — yet, her inaccurate dress further mystifies whether the girl ever lived.

Despite not having royalty in tribal history, Engdahl said, the Cowlitz Tribe currently has a “Canoe Family Princess,” the tribes’ own adoption of a European word.

“For us, this seems natural. Our cultural royalty are not portraying ‘Indians.’ They are Indian,” she said. “They are portraying a heritage that includes ancestry, history and a very close relationship to nature. They embody virtues such as honesty, ethics, goodness and kindness.  They demonstrate a behavior that honors the elders, and all of the tribal members. It is not a position taken lightly or in ‘fun.’”

Costumes and Personas

Engdahl recalled the state law from recent years that spurred discussion over whether or not to change the Toledo School District’s logo from the “Indians.” Eventually, the district chose to go with the “Riverhawks,” emblematic of the school’s proximity to the Cowlitz River and the ospreys that nest on its stadium light poles. 

The Cowlitz Tribal Council eventually voted to endorse the mascot change, Engdahl said, but the choice was not made trivially. 

“This was not an easy discussion,” she wrote in an email. “Many Cowlitz Tribal members attended school in Toledo and loved their school. The Cowlitz Tribe had a strong association with the Toledo Indians, an affiliation that carries forward to today, regardless of the mascot name.”

According to Eileen Owens, among those who loved the Toledo Indians moniker was Gary Ike,  a Cowlitz Tribal Member who died in 2010. He’s on the record for his adoration and pride around the mascot. 

“The movement” of changing mascots and names, Engdahl said, is gaining momentum. It isn’t always black and white, but she recognized it as an effort to restore dignity and remove stereotyping, derogatory, or sometimes simply “viscous” terms and depictions of American Indians, such as the word “squaw.”

As for Princess Napawinah, Engdahl said, “I’m sad this is a tradition for the city. Many tribes around the country have struggled with this kind of stereotyping.”

Local governments, organizations, businesses and schools alike across the United States have appropriated Native American names, themes or costumes, Engdahl said. 

“Some in honor of native people, some in derision of native people. Nevertheless, appropriated names, costumes and personas continue to cause confusion in this country, masking real native lifeways that are completely different from festival-induced ideas and false concepts,” she said.

The Parade

Eileen Owens is on the Napavine Funtime Festival parade committee, not on the nonprofit’s board, so she has not attended all the meetings. Garrety’s petition claimed tribal members had provided input on the parade’s native theme, and likewise Dupuis said she has family who previously tried talking to Owens about the princess. 

Owens said she’d never heard of that happening, and maintained that in 50 years, this was the first controversy she encountered.

“I still don’t think there’s a problem with it because we’re not degrading,” Owens said. “It’s just a fun thing.”

Jerry and Eileen Owens rarely get away from Lewis County due to their involvement in the Napavine Funtime Festival and their roles as 4-H leaders at the Southwest Washington Fair later each summer. 

After this year, Owens said she doesn’t see herself working on the festival again, let alone organizing the Princess Napawinah pageant. 

“We’re doing it for entertainment. We’re not doing it for a cultural history display,” Owens said, later adding, “We’ve always been open to anyone who comes to our meeting but we still would like to honor our princess. We send out questionnaires. … We’re trying to honor our town. It's not a history lesson.”

The Napavine Funtime Festival board meets on the first Thursday night of every month at the Napavine City Hall. 

The Funtime Festival lasts just one day and is scheduled for July 15. The parade begins at 11 a.m. Owens advised visitors to use extreme caution when driving into town as the parade is the same day as the Seattle-to-Portland bike ride and riders frequently pass through Napavine.