The “littlest canoe carver in the world” carefully sanded a cedar paddle.

That’s how Dave Paul described 7-year-old Amelia McConville, who stood as tall as her nearly finished 3½-foot cedar paddle. She didn’t smile when he said it. She was focused on work.

Paul, a University of Idaho exercise sciences professor, was among about 12 volunteers who showed up last week in Lapwai to teach kids cultural skills once lost to time. Before this after-school program began in 2017, it had been 110 years since a canoe was carved on the Nez Perce Reservation. The fourth and fifth grader program was created by Nimiipuu Protecting the Environment.

Now, several dugout canoes later, young people like Amelia, who is Nez Perce, learn from other young folks, who learned from the program’s founders.

Eighth grade student Rease Maconnell, 14, and sixth grade student Celila Arthur, 12, volunteer to set up for the kids and help run the program. Both have experience.

“I have knowledge of how to teach and how to create it,” Maconnell said of carving paddles.

Arthur said she now has five paddles at home. Her motivation for helping the younger ones is simple: “It’s fun.”

Lucii Simpson, 71, a volunteer and big fan of the program, said, “This is about bringing back the culture that was lost to the tribe.”

Founding teachers had to learn traditional dugout designs by studying old canoes like one that belonged to Chief Joseph’s brother, Simpson said.

New life in old traditions means new stories, of course.

Simpson laughs about the mistakes in their first canoes: one was leaky and took on water, another dumped paddlers during a cold spring run near Hog Island on the Clearwater River.

There’s no doubt that the kids appreciate the program.

Ten-year-old fourth graders Cylen Moses and Hudson Speas proudly displayed their paddles. Speas’ paddle is decorated with a buffalo skull and Moses’ was more elaborate, with a bear symbolizing his father, a “beautiful rose” for his mother, and another symbol for himself.

“It’s hard work but it pays off,” Speas said.

“You can go anywhere with a paddle and a canoe to fish,” Moses said.

Volunteers also operated a painting station, along with an engraving station, for decorating paddles. They also had archery practice using PVC piping for bows strung with paracord.

The work and the atmosphere is vibrant and joyful. Caught up in their creativity, the young people most likely failed to notice how monumental this moment is in a culture that stopped carving canoes for a century — the weight of history has shifted onto these youngsters. They will always be the first ones who learned to carve canoes and paddles, again.

Like true masters in the making, they carry that weight lightly.

After all, even if “the littlest carver in the world” wears a serious expression as she makes sure her paddle is smooth and feels balanced just right, laughter bubbles all around her, like water over rocks on the Clearwater River in summer.