‘Rules of the canoe’ help guide Beaver Tales Coffee through community pressure
At Beaver Tales Coffee on Morris Street in La Conner, a painting hangs of the Rainbow Bridge and two blue herons flying across the Swinomish Channel. The artist, Don Wesley, watched the birds pass back and forth. When the painting later made it into the shop, Wesley likened the birds to the owners, Tony and Michelle Cladusbid, spreading their message from one bank of the channel to the other, the Swinomish Reservation to La Conner.
To Tony and Michelle, Beaver Tales is more than coffee. Having been skippers for Tribal Canoe Journeys, they carry with them the “rules of the canoe,” espousing community-building, working steadily and appreciating the journey.
Michelle opened Beaver Tales Coffee in 2021, three months before Tony was hired on for plumbing. When he heard about her vision for the business — cultural preservation, education and outreach – he said it aligned exactly with what he had been trying to do with the committee work in his tribe.
“It has to be important that people know who was here before anybody else,” he said.
Tony’s vision
Tony came in with the goal of a coffee shop on each of the traditional lands of the Swinomish, Samish, Lower Skagit and Kikiallus tribes making up the Swinomish Tribal Community. Just as each of the tribes is distinct, each shop would be too.
The message spread. Soon, Beaver Tales Coffee sprouted at the Skagit Valley College in Oak Harbor, near the traditional Lower Skagit village of Kla-tole-tsche, and the Coupeville Wharf, near the important winter village known as Bʒáʒale.
Last November, the Coupeville Creative District chose the Coupeville shop as the sʷədəbš Cultural Center, a gathering hub providing opportunities for collaboration, storytelling and artistic expression. The hub has gone on to host cultural programming, workshops and exhibits to educate and inspire visitors.
“Coffee is a conduit. People are the glue,” Michelle said. “Our business is what allows us to do these educational programs. Our business is what has been funding them. The outreach we’ve done already, even without the creative district.”
Stark reality
The ambitious vision and quick rise did not come without its challenges. Struggling to make overhead and payroll payments, the Oak Harbor location recently closed its doors less than two years after it opened.
The sʷədəbš community project, mixed with the struggles of maintaining a small business, has brought critiques from some community members over the Cladusbid’s late payments to rent and staff.
“Literally, who is not having financial trouble?” Michelle asked.
The difference between Beaver Tales and other businesses is belief, she said. The Cladusbids believe in making it a success, even when it doesn’t make sense.
“(Others) would have folded already, but we’re not willing to,” she said. “We just keep reinvesting money, and we will be successful. Other people’s fear cannot inform me. Their fear of failure cannot influence me. Just because they wouldn’t do what we’re doing doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it.”
Michelle, a white woman adopted into the Tlingit tribe, said that in traditional Native values, wealth is not about ownership.
“From my white perspective, success for me is not about how far up the ladder I can climb,” she said. “From my white perspective, it’s about how much can we give away? How much can we offer? How much can we help?”
The business critiques are nothing new, she said.
“We face challenges simply by being who we are. People from the very beginning said to me ‘you’re gonna fail.’ Five years ago, ‘you’re gonna fail. You’re never gonna make it. It’s never gonna work. You’re doing it all wrong’.”
Hailing from a prominent Swinomish family, Tony said critiques come from the other side of the channel too.
“People think that I should have to ask permission to do what I’m doing,” he said. “I answer for nobody. I speak for myself. I don’t speak for the tribe. I don’t speak for the government. I speak about education. I speak about recognition, and I speak about what history has already preserved up until this point. My job is to take it forward and speak it so nobody else forgets.”
He added, “I’ve lived way too many years and fought way too many battles to help my tribe get where it’s at. I’ve been involved since I was a child with preserving and protecting what we have.”
A different kind of business
Beaver Tales operates on a model of speaking into existence and having faith, Tony said.
“It’s a form of prayer. It’s a form of affirmation. A form of recognition of what’s to come and your ability to make it happen. All you do is speak it into existence and make it work. Because if you say it loud, it’s going to happen.”
Some of Beaver Tale’s longest-tenured employees have adopted this mindset.
When Kali Sebastian, a barista, didn’t receive payment for weeks in La Conner due to the challenges facing the newly opened business, she decided to stay anyway with faith it would work out.
The leap paid off. Today, she manages the shop.
According to Michelle, the two took the leap in each other.
“I am in recovery,” Sebastian said, “and spent about two years of my life on the streets having a substance abuse problem and everything like that. I was very wary about getting back into the workforce, and I never worked in coffee before. I took a chance and decided to come in, and that changed my life.”
Working for Beaver Tales ended up being the best career move she has made.
“I have been a firm believer since the very beginning that this is a company worth being a part of, and I could see the future of its success from the very beginning,” she said. “I was in a really difficult position personally when I first started working here, as was Michelle.”
Speaking the future
Having to fall back from the original goal of coffee shops in each of the traditional lands, the Cladusbids have shifted their focus to stability.
“We’re all going by bootstrapping, hanging around, and yes, we have to budget, and yes, we have to reorganize and yes, we have to rethink,” Michelle said. “Every hurdle we have ever faced, we have confidence, and this is no different.”
For Tony, persisting is bigger than the business and bigger than himself.
“For me, the utmost important part of all of this is just being the example in a community that typically, historically, has never happened,” he said. “I’m the only one here.”
Tony said he believes he is the only Native La Conner businessperson enrolled in the reservation, despite La Conner having a population of less than 1,000 bordering a tribal community of over 3,000.
“There should not only be one business. There should be many,” he said. “The base of the community should be plastered with people just like me.”
Stability can take time, Tony said, and he’s found peace with that.
“I don’t look for tomorrow,” he said. “Success comes from generational vision. We are not a single generation here, and the biggest problem with Western society is they’re all wanting results now.”
— By Sam Fletcher
Also read in Salish Current:
• “From gym mats to coffee shops, third places anchor community,” Feb. 7, 2025
• “Serving sandwiches and building bonds,” Aug. 12, 2024
• “Library … plus: today’s version provides much more than books,” Feb. 27, 2024