Pacific Northwest Coast Art
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Recent papers in Pacific Northwest Coast Art
Carved and painted onto wood, stone, bone, animal skins or metal, woven and knit into cloth, material culture from Northwest Coast Native peoples has historically been a one-of-a-kind iteration and a declaration of of familial rights and... more
Whaling was a central aspect of Nuu-chah-nulth, Ditidaht and Makah culture on the northwest coast of North America. Not only was it economically important, it was vital to chiefly prestige. Art and ceremonial life were dominated by themes... more
The Norwegian Adrian Jacobsen collected seven thousand objects on the northwest coast of America and in Alaska for the Ethnological Museum in Berlin. He had close ties with the Hamburg zoo director Carl Hagenbeck, both in business and in... more
This article begins with an analysis of the problems of ‘physical repatriation’, as I review the case of the return of a First Nations mask to its community of origin. First Nations struggle to fit their concepts of ownership into western... more
The totem pole, a generic term referring to an assortment of carved poles and posts, emerged in the twentieth century as an iconic marker of Canadian identity that encapsulates the displacement of a pre-industrial indigenous past with an... more
On Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe (JST) is enacting contested approaches of reclaiming tribal histories threatened by persistent 19th century settler colonial narratives of ethnic erasure. Legally exiled... more
The Northwest Coast (NWC) halibut hook is both an indigenous fishing technology, and an iconic object of rich cultural history. This study utilizes biological , statistical, ecological, and ethnographic data to examine the function(s) of... more
The companion study by Joanne MacDonald to that of the Totem Poles of Kitwanga by George MacDonald
From "Unsettling Native Art Histories on the Northwest Coast," edited by Kathryn Bunn-Marcuse and Aldona Jonaitis
I introduced a Northwest Coast Master Artist, Susan Point’s book on her limited edition prints. Her book: Susan Point: Works on Paper is readily available through online vendors and is a great addition to anyone’s Native American Art... more
This article presents evidence for the antiquity and development of Nuu-chah-nulth whaling, drawing on recent archaeological work in Barkley Sound. DNA identifications of whale species reveal past whaling practices. The evidence is... more
The research involved the efforts of a wet archaeological site specialist (Dale Croes) and a Master Basketmaker and Elder from the Suquamish Tribe (Ed Carriere), who joined together to replicate and scientifically analyze the... more
Native American material culture rests uneasily within art museums. Removed from their original contexts of use, these culturally significant objects have been historically resignified as "primitive,” “exotic,” or representative of the... more
While running the Hoko River Archaeological Project Site Complex we compiled a public outreach news bulletin that covered many of the research and crew news happening at the site. This series of publications provides much inside and well... more
As an archaeologist I was just as surprised to be asked to help introduce Susan Point: Works on Paper. All my forty-plus-year career I have specialized in waterlogged or wet sites, which preserve wood and fiber artifacts... more
Prepared for Stronger than Stone: (Re)Inventing the Indigenous Monument Conference, Co-hosted by the Illingworth Kerr Gallery at the Alberta College of Art + Design (ACAD), Calgary; and the Mendel Art Gallery, Museums 3.0, the Kenderdine... more
This catalogue essay parses specific visual languages of coastal Nations to illustrate how Coast Salish design has been (re)codified in the most recent era of artistic practice along the coast.
In this study prehistoric basketry items, including baskets, cradles, hats, mats, and tumplines, from the Ozette Village Archaeological site and other Northwest Coast water-saturated archaeological sites are examined on three analytical... more
Exhibition catalogue: Hello World. Revising a Collection at Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum für Gegenwart - Berlin, pages 195-200. The exhibition catalogue “Hello World. Revising a Collection” elaborates in extensive essays and 14 chapters... more
A 1968 paper on incised mudstone concretions found in the summer excavations of the Watmough Bay site on Lopez Island for undergraduates classes with Dr. Robert Greengo and Bill Holm, University of Washington: Incised mudstone... more
Miniature objects from non-European contexts have ideological elements which are often overlooked in the museum space because their small size and iconic relations make them difficult to accurately interpret and disrupt curatorial efforts... more
Introduction to reprint of A. Jacobsen's travelogue: J. Adrian Jacobsen (1853-1947), ein aus der Nähe von Trömso stammender norwegischer Seemann, der sich selbst als „Kapitän“ bezeichnete, führte in den Jahren 1881 bis 1883 im Auftrag... more
The brothers Aurel Krause (1848-1908) and Arthur Krause (1851-1920) were born in the Schwetz region of West Prussia and both studied natural sciences in Berlin, where they also obtained permanent teaching posts. Well-trained by their... more
Ed Carriere, Suquamish Elder (87) and Master Basketweaver and Canoe Carver, and Dale R. Croes, Washington State University (WSU) wet/waterlogged archaeological site and ancient basket specialist (72), have written a book documenting their... more
THE HOKO RIVER site complex is located about 30 km from the northwest tip of the Olympic Peninsula, along the Strait of Juan de Fuca (Fig. 1). The complex consists of two temporally distinct areas of prehistoric occupation: (1) an upriver... more
Review of the exhibition "Story Box: Franz Boas, George Hunt and the Making of Anthropology," curated by Aaron Glass at the Bard Graduate Center Gallery (14 February - 7 July 2019) and U’mista Cultural Centre (20 July - 24 October 2019).
Summary of some of the research conducted on the Princeton University Art Museum's collection of Northwest Coast Native Art.
In the late nineteenth century, Haida artists worked together to create a navy and red wool tunic—a ceremonial garment now housed in the Burke Museum—that features bold crest images of the wearer’s lineage. Most striking is the crest... more
The artists of ‘(R)evolving Whorl(d)’ come to their visual deliberations via different paths, but all are scholars of Coast Salish cultural history and the evolution of the iconic spindle whorl design. This graceful design vocabulary is... more
This article uses ethnographic methods to explore the stories, lives, and practices of a handful of contemporary Nuu-chah-nulth weavers: from teenage girls to eighty-something-year-old women. These weavers perpetuate an ancient weaving... more
For over 150 years, Tlingit women artists have beaded colorful, intricately beautiful designs on moccasins, dolls, octopus bags, tunics, and other garments. Painful Beauty suggests that at a time when Indigenous cultural practices were... more
This article considers the work of Nathan Jackson, the preeminent Alaskan Tlingit carver and revivalist of the postwar period, who engaged modernist forms and principles in his early career. His paintings, prints, and experiments in... more
This paper examines the archaeological evidence for art production, applied decoration and personal ornamentation recovered from pre-contact and early historic Nuu-chah-nulth contexts. Although the archaeological record of early... more