Talk:War canoe

Move/rename/split

I found this while looking for a home for this really neat public-domain pic of a war canoe from Gitanyow, British Columbia and tehre happen to be another article or two on coastal-culture war canoes; this article should be War Canoe (sport) or War Canoe racing and there should be War Canoe (Pacific Northwest), War Canoe (Polynesia) etc. user:OldManRivers races himself in the indigenous war canoe-racing circuit (he's Kwakwaka'wakw and Skwxwu7mesh), I'm sure he'll be interested (once he gets time; he's in the dance-troupe accompnaying the opening showings of In the Land of the Head Hunters, which interestingly enough had an alternative title In the Land of the War Canoes.....Skookum1 (talk) 20:01, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Title and breadth

1. Why the capital on "Canoe"?
2. Why is the focus almost entirely on present-day racing rather than actual, traditional war canoes?

- Jmabel | Talk 06:31, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Ah, I see Skookum1 had similar concerns. - Jmabel | Talk 06:32, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

I just made a minor addition to that effect, and am hoping User:OldManRivers will spend some time on this article (also Pacific Northwest Canoe, which has the same capital-c issue). And I wanted to comment about the indigenous canoe - probably Skwxwu7mesh but not necessarily - that I just added; it may not be a war canoe by design, though could be used for war; I'd guess it's more like a "fishing and household goods canoe" ...was it Pierre Berton or Pierre Trudeau who said "Canadians are the only people who know how to make love in a canoe"?...Given the complexity of the ethnographic article(s) about "war canoes and warfare", and the variety of cultures and designs, I'd say the sport shoudl be split off as War canoeing (sport) or War canoe (sport); but even then as a sport it shoudl cover the indigenous-racing circuit in BC, Washington and Alaska (which has a lot of competitors....). Again, hopefully OMR can provide some citable materials;resources and better images....there might be an image of Lootaas out there, the Haida canoe Bill Reid built for Expo 86.Skookum1 (talk) 01:34, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Hi Skookum, Jmabel,

The emphasis is (was) on present-day racing canoes because that's what I know about. No intention to exclude any other aspects of the topic, although the suggestion to split to War Canoe (sport) and something like War Canoe (traditional) is I think a good one. I would imagine that the traditional aspect would have a fair bit of info out there somewhere...Burtonpe (talk) 01:12, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, well, User:OldManRivers has been too busy paddling in FN canoe races all summer to write it LOL; I keep reminding him but he's a young guy out having his life, so to speak. About the titles, it would seem that the disambiguations are needed in both cases, although with the "official" sport article having both words capitalized woudl seem to make sense, like Ski Jumping or Rhythmic Gymnastics (if those are indeed capitalized?); but even with the "traditional" dab there might be other dabs....I'm of course most familiar with the Pacific Northwest canoe culture and am uncertain of which other cultures would have them - Outrigger already exists so that could be a dab/redirect combo I suppose. Not sure about Caribbean and African and Mekong peoples etc - not sure what a Thai "barge" is properly called, although kayiks were originally a military craft for the Ottomans. Essentially it's the PacNW ones we're talking about, although I stand ready to be corrected; but there there is some divide between traditional war canoes and the modern ones...maybe hard to separate them, though, but I hesitate to see native war-canoe racing kept in a separate article from non-native war canoe racing...and wonder why the one group isn't racing with the other. Maybe OldManRivers can answer that when he finally shows up (Dustin, where are you??). If you're in Vancouver, Jmable, the Burrard Band/Tsleil-waututh racing club is called Takaya Wolf Clan and their clubhouse is out on the Burrard Reserve near Cates Park/Dollarton - I think they have a website. I'm in Hali now so can't drop out and get some info/refs but if you're in Vancouver and feel so inclined....an article on Lootaas, Bill Reid's Expo-era rebuild/remake, has been needed for a while now also; not sure who has it, mabye the Haida Cultural Centre in Masset (Skidegate?).Skookum1 (talk) 01:59, 4 December 2008 (UTC)