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 privileges.  These items adorned public and private spaces, including the body, and were traditionally produced by hand.  In recent years, some designs have been serialized and mass produced through new technologies like silk screen and digital printing, adorning everything from coffee mugs to t-shirts, sunglasses, jewelry and other garments (Roth 2012; Roth 2015). This chapter explores the history of Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations specifically and analyzes their distinctive aesthetics and design practice through the lens of fashion theory.  The chapter concludes with a discussion of contemporary Nuu-chah-nulth designers and the circulation of their work.  I ask: how does fashion operate within Nuu-chah-nulth social organization and how has ongoing colonialism and hybridization of prestige and capitalist economies transformed Nuu-chah-nulth fashion systems and design ideas? The findings discussed in this chapter draw from ongoing ethnographic research (beginning in October 2009) and archival- and museum-based research at both major and minor institutional repositories in the United States, Canada, Germany and England.

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 related to whaling. Thunderbird, the great supernatural whaler, was the source of hereditary prerogatives held by chiefs, including names, dances, regalia and rights to display images of thunderbird and whale. This paper argues that human observations of predatory behaviour by orcas (or killer whales) led to these animals also being perceived as non-human whalers from which chiefly prerogatives could be obtained. Wolves, the main figures in Nuu-chah-nulth ceremonial life, had the power to transform into orcas, explaining their frequent presence in the art with thunderbirds and whales. This paper presents archaeological evidence for orca in the context of whaling and offers interpretations based on the extensive ethnographic and oral historical records. It also places perceptions of animals, the role of the hunter’s wife and beliefs about orca in a broader context involving hunting societies in northwestern North America.

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 private. When Adrian couldn't find a job at the Berlin Museum after his big collecting trip was over, he hired a group of nine Nuxalk men, members of an indigenous group in British Columbia who lived north of Vancouver and were called 'Bella Coola' by Europeans at the time.  He had them travel to Germany, where they performed in different cities.
The stay of the Nuxalk differed in many ways from the other Völkerschauen. They were not forcibly recruited “exotic people” but actively involved in the organization and design of their shows

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 ones, where objects are viewed as alienable. As an alternative, the art of John Powell and Marianne Nicolson depicts a ‘figurative repatriation’ that does not rely on either the courts or museums to recognize legal or moral ownership. I argue that these contemporary artworks are social agents, which bring First Nations cultural objects home by staking out territory within museums. These ‘artist warriors’ forcibly recover (both literally and metaphorically) First Nations objects on display in foreign settings and reinscribe meaning at the level of the personal and the communal. They make objectified assertions of native identity that reclaim the right to self-definition. Moreover, these claims are made all the more powerful through their conscious location within an oppositional discourse framed by the Canadian western art world.

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 industrialized, modern present.  Euro-Canadian understandings of the totem pole thus disembodied the objects from enlivening ceremonies and set them in a hermetically-sealed temporal zone.  In contrast, I argue that the poles have never been set in a secure “inner world” by their producers, but rather provide a nexus between worlds through which competition can be negotiated and harmony maintained.  George MacDonald describes Haida cosmology as a three-tiered universe connected by a cosmic tree that was represented in this world as a house pole.  Crest poles, like the Haida house pole, therefore constituted a symbolic axis connecting worlds in ways that asserted social status and resource ownership on this spiritual plane. Competition over resources and the Euro-Canadian interest in appropriating and commoditizing Northwest Coast art encouraged Native peoples to expand their audience to yet another ranked kingdom: Canada.  This paper explores the ways in which Native Canadian people linked the so-called inner and outer worlds through their poles, with particular attention paid to how the poles were used to speak to non-Native peoples.  I provide a range of examples, including poles adorned with representations of Abraham Lincoln in the 1870s and pole presentations from the twentieth century that refer to the Royal Proclamation of 1763, the foundation of Native land claims.

A paper given on Sto:lo land: British Columbia: Inner and Outer Worlds A Conference Sponsored by the University College of the Fraser Valley and the Sto:lo Nation, 2007

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 from their capital village in 1871 as a result of government-mandated arson and legal ordinances banning Indigenous individuals from city limits, ancestral JST homelands also include Olympic National Park, popularly lauded as a pristine wilderness area devoid of Native inhabitation. Emanating from the Tribe’s previously unrecognized federal status and history of intermarriage with Scandinavian loggers, tropes of assimilation and extinction contribute to the contemporary non-Indigenous public’s denial of JST existence. By raising totem poles—monuments not historically rooted within JST artistic repertoire—to commemorate tribal leaders and events, the JST are challenging their veiled history in a region known for outdoor recreation and tourism. Reclaiming territory, communicating Indigenous presence, and resisting historical amnesia via totem poles have generated reconciliatory outcomes between the Tribe and non-Natives. However, adopting totem poles as a cultural iconography has also produced division within the tribal community itself, with critics raising questions about the authenticity of such monuments, as well as concerns about artistic appropriation and “performing” pan-Indigeneity for tourists. Through a lens of resiliency and regeneration, I analyze the JST’s opposition to being consigned to the past, and the challenges encountered while representing and redefining their own cultural identity.
My dissertation is organized into nine chapters, including the Introduction and Conclusion. Chapter 2 provides a brief timeline of pre-colonial JST history, and highlights how the Tribe engaged in cultural interaction and exchange prior to settler colonialism. Chapter 3 examines early JST relationships with non-Native individuals, and charts the region’s complicated trajectory from initial coexistence to conflict and Indigenous exile. Chapter 4 discusses how the Olympic Peninsula was transformed into a literal and metaphorical wilderness, the ways in which settler colonists adopted an Indigenous identity for themselves while denying JST presence, and contemporary consequences of erasure. Chapter 5 traces the historical and modern status of S’Klallam material culture, with emphasis on the gradual shift to a pan-Northwest Native genre (inclusive of totem poles) as a result of early 20th century tourist, academic, and museum attitudes that disparaged S’Klallam art and culture. Chapter 6 proposes various hypotheses for why the JST adopted totem poles beginning in the 1960s-1990s, and analyzes these recent monuments through a lens of identity performance and heritage maintenance. Chapter 7 highlights the discontent associated with JST poles by exploring issues of cultural property rights, cultural appropriation, and power imbalance within the Tribe, whereas Chapter 8 analyzes how totem poles have increased JST visibility and enhanced the Tribe’s cultural preservation attempts.

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 NWC halibut hooks, and how and why dimensions are changing through time. Analyses of measurements from 143 specimens, dated from 1867 to 2015, suggest a statistically significant increase in overall length through time. These findings support the hypothesis that as the use of modern fishing technologies became more prevalent, and traditional NWC halibut hooks largely lost their original function (i.e., catching halibut), dimensions changed to favor decorative or symbolic content over utilitarian/ functional requirements. Archival data, peer-reviewed literature, and ethnographic interviews with contemporary carvers and fishers support the assertion that average dimensions of early NWC halibut hooks targeted fish between 20 and 100 lbs., thus promoting sustainability of Pacific halibut breeding populations. Whether the hooks were designed intentionally to promote sustainability or this size of fish was targeted for other reasons remains an open question.

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 collection. My introduction
reflects wet site art found through work along the Northwest Coast of
North America and is reprinted here.

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 interpreted in terms of the actions of past whaling chiefs.

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 2,000-year-old basketry collection from the Biderbost wet site, Snoqualmie Tribal Territory, housed at the University of Washington (UW) Burke Museum Archaeology Program (Figure 1). Working on this analysis and replication project over the past four years, we concluded that it was not enough to call this a case of Experimental Archaeology; we describe our work as a new approach termed Generationally-Linked Archaeology, an approach that chronologically connects from both directions, linking contemporary cultural specialists with ancient and ancestral basketmakers through the science of archaeology. We present our approach here after publicly presenting our efforts to both indigenous and scientific archaeological audiences, including Native peoples at the Northwest Native American Basketweavers Association, Indigenous Ainu of northern Japan, and at a National Maori Weavers conference in New Zealand, and to archaeological scientists at two annual SAA conferences, the Wetland Archaeo-logical Research Project (WARP) 30th Anniversary Conference in Bradford, England, and a Wetland Archaeology Conference in central France.

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 mythic Other. Unfortunately exhibited as material evidence of progress, advancement, and civilization, they are largely silent about their makers’ desires and intentions. Today, Native American objects are reclaiming new voice. Many art museums are adopting more inclusive approaches to representational practice and are engaging with Native American peoples and objects in new ways. These approaches are fostering exciting conversations about the intersections of European and Native American ontologies and aesthetics.
In the spring of 2016, we were invited by the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum to survey their small but distinguished Native American collection. We identified the objects and made exhibition (as well as digital and archival) recommendations. Many of the items were donations from alumni and often did not include detailed provenience. A group of 87 objects, however, were acquired in 1944 as part of an exchange with the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation. The Heye Foundation was founded in 1916 as a prominent research institution focusing on Native American artifacts and cultures, and its collections now comprise the core of the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) in Washington, D.C. We contacted Ann McMullen, curator at the NMAI and head of collections research, who provided us with a complete set of documentation for the RISD Museum's Heye Foundation objects. Perhaps most spectacularly, these items included a Tlingit headdress frontlet, whose provenance, impressive craftsmanship, and cultural meanings are the focus of this article.

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 illustrated information about our work at the river bank wet site work and rockshelter excavations.

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 excellently—typically up to  90 percent of the artifacts and material culture of ancient Northwest Coast peoples come from such sites. As in the title of one of her prints, Echoing the Past, Susan possibly felt that my exposure to the wealth of this ancient cultural art tradition might help describe some of her efforts to transmit it into our future.

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 Art Gallery at the University of Saskatchewan, and the Wanuskewin Heritage Park, Saskatoon, November 2014.

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 levels. First, the basketry attributes (modes) are considered and compared between the sites. Second, basketry stylistic/technological classes are created using a paradigmatic classification framework. These basket, hat, and mat classes are also compared between sites through the use of cluster analysis techniques. The results of these comparisons clearly indicate a continuity of basketry styles in three separate regions of the
Northwest Coast for the last 2,000 to 3,000 years, potentially indicating techno-cultural continuity in these regions. Third, a functional classification of the basketry items from Ozette Village and other sites is considered. The Ozette basketry artifacts are ideal for this purpose, since they generally are recovered in their original position in a prehistoric household and contain original contents. The arrangement of the basketry objects in Ozette House I indicate the location of different family units. Functional categories of basketry in each family area reflect the status and activities of the household members. Comparisons of basketry functional categories from each Northwest Coast wet site demonstrate site-use differences. Major village
sites, fishing stations, and shellfish gathering areas are separated in cluster analysis since they produce different frequencies of basketry categories. The three-level analysis of basketry from Ozette Village and other Northwest Coast wet sites demonstrates a special analytic value for basketry artifacts in Northwest Coast prehistory research.

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 untold stories of transnational artistic networks and cross-cultural entanglements from the late 19th century to the present, including Heinrich Vogeler’s path to the Soviet Union, Dadaist Tomoyoshi Murayama’s sojourn in Berlin in the 1920s, and the collaborations between Nicolás García Uriburu and Joseph Beuys.
The catalogue “Hello World. Revising a Collection” is edited by Udo Kittelmann and Gabriele Knapstein for the Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and published by Hirmer Verlag (432 pages, 600 images in colour, 24 x 32 cm softcover).

With contributions by Deepak Ananth, Zdenka Badovinac, Sven Beckstette, Arno Bertina, Eugen Blume, Daniela Bystron, Clémentine Deliss, Jenny Dirksen, Alexander Fahrenholz, Daniel Garza Usabiaga, Raffael Dedo Gadebusch, Vigen Galstyan, Anna Catharina Gebbers, Natasha Ginwala, Andrea Giunta, Udo Kittelmann, Gabriele Knapstein, Viola König, Tomoko Mamine, Andreas Neufert, Azu Nwagbogu, Meliné Pehlivanian, Melanie Roumiguière, Grace Samboh, Nina Schallenberg, Kristina Schrei, Nusrat Sheikh, Santiago da Silva, Enin Supriyanto, Hortensia Völckers.

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 concretions are limey claystones which the Natives of Lopez Island had incised line-designs on for some unknow purpose.  These incised designs do show some patterns and therefore inferences can be suggested as to some of the content.  These inferences are based on comparative studies between techniques found among present day Northwest Coast groups and between patterns found in local archaeological sites.

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 to impose meaning upon them; a situation I term miniature dissonance. This article will examine this phenomenon using three related case studies featuring miniatures from the Northwest Coast of North America. It will consider what might have been misunderstood in these objects and what they might originally have been intended to achieve, followed by an example from a recent Ancient Egyptian exhibition which demonstrates that this problem is both more widespread and problematic than is often recognised. These miniatures disrupt curatorial intentionality in the museum space, and it is only by carefully considering their origins and affordances that they can be adequately and accurately interpreted and displayed.

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 des Gründers des Berliner Völkerkundemuseums Adolf Bastian eine Sammelreise an den zu Britisch Kolumbien (Kanada) gehörigen Teil der amerikanischen Nordwestküste und das nördliche Alaska durch. Obgleich seine knapp 7000 Objekte umfassende Sammlung von dort und sein Werk immer wieder Gegenstand wissenschaftlicher Forschung waren, ist sein Reisebericht voller wertvoller Informationen zu Reiseverlauf und Sammlung in der deutschen Originalfassung nie wieder aufgelegt worden. Von San Francisco aus besuchte Jacobsen Vancouver Island, die Queen Charlotte Islands sowie die Gegend von Victoria und hatte die Möglichkeit, nicht nur die Ankäufe bei den Kwakiutl (Kwakwaka’wakw), Haida Gwaii, Bella Coola (Nuxalk) usw. zu tätigen, sondern auch die dazugehörigen Prakti¬ken wie Rituale, Tänze und Theateraufführungen genau zu studieren. Der abenteuerliche Charakter von Jacobsens Aufenthalt an der Nordwestküste wird noch weit übertroffen von der Expedition im unwirtlichen rauen und kalten Norden Alaskas, im Norton Sound, dem Kuskokwim und Yukon Gebiet bei den Yup’ik Eskimo, Ingalik und Tanaina Indianer. Bei Aufenthalten von mitunter nur einer Stunde erwarb Jacobsen alles, was er bekommen konnte. Seine Sammlung galt schon bald darauf als so repräsentativ und einmalig, dass sich kritische Stimmen in den USA und Kanada gegen diesen „Ausverkauf“ durch einen Europäer erhoben.

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 travels throughout Europe and experienced in scientific study, they appeared to the se¬lection committee of the “Geographical Society of Bremen” (the former “Association for North Polar Travel”) to be ideal candidates to undertake a scientific and ethnological research and collecting journey to the coastal regions of the Bering Strait and the Bering Sea, in particular the Chukchi Peninsula and those parts of Alaska which had then been very little explored scientifically or ethnographically. The Krause brothers were given leave and their expedition lasted from 1880-1881, but it was not the Chukchi Peninsula, originally considered to be the primary goal of the expedition, which aroused later interest, but rather their six-month stay with the Tlingit people in South-Eastern Alaska. This was no doubt in part because the expedition’s findings were pub¬lished only in essay form in scholarly journals, while Aurel Krause devoted a separate monograph to the Tlingit in which he published both brothers’ findings. This was often quoted, although never reprinted in the original German. An English translation appeared in 1956, justified by the translator and editor Erna Krause as follows: “It is the most complete description that exists of the life of the Tlingit. Other good books about them have appeared, but they examine only parts of the picture.”
In keeping with the contemporary perception of a need to document pre-European cultures as thoroughly as possible in the face of their predicted destruction, the Krause brothers were meticulous and methodical in their collecting and described what they found in detail, helped by their gift for observation and their scientific training. The significance of Aurel’s monograph is in its documentation and evaluation of the brothers’ find¬ings. It is interesting to compare this work with diary entries and letters from the field. Aurel clearly revised initial perceptions and evaluations after his return having examined relevant literature and engaged with the latest scholarship.

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 partnership in understanding and replicating the over 2,000 years, or 100 generations, of ancient Salish Sea basketry artifacts. This article takes excerpts from this new book in Ed’s own words as he contributes half the text in this 300 page book, accompanied with details by 314 color plates, 100 line drawings, maps and charts, bibliography, list of suggested readings, a glossary and full index. The book, Re-Awakening Ancient Salish Sea Basketry, Fifty Years of Basketry Studies is published by Northwest Anthropology, LLC. and available through Amazon.com. Search for Carriere and click on his Author’s page for a great video featuring him making his traditional clam baskets that he had made for his family.

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 water­logged (wet) and adjoining (dry) campsite area (45-CA-213) dating from 3,000 to 2,200 B.P., and (2) a rivermouth site within a large rockshelter (45-CA-21), occupied from about 900 to 100 B.P. (Fig. 1).

Excavations of the upriver ''wet/dry" site (45-CA-213) began in 1973 (Croes 1976; Croes and Blinman 1980; Gross 1986; Howes 1982; Stucki 1983). Water­saturated silt/sand deposits exposed along the edge of the Hoko River contain over 25 layers of well-preserved organic vegetal mats that encase discarded perishable artifacts, including basketry, cordage, fishing hooks, hafted microlith "fish" knives, woodworking tools, and carved wood art as well as animal bone and rare shellfish remains (Croes and Blinman 1980; Flenniken 1981; Figs. 2-7). A predominance of flatfish, round.fish, and rockfish remains have been recovered from the wet site in association with over 400 wooden offshore-fishing hooks, indicative of the fisheries focus at this early site (Croes and Blinman 1980; Hoff 1980; Stucki 1983, Fig. 4).

The cut bank above the wet deposits represents a cross section of an ancient point bar, upon which the original fishing camps were established (Stucki 1983; Figs. 1 and 2). These dry campsite deposits can be stratigraphically traced to corresponding wet layers of organic material below the river high-tide line. The dry deposits lack any preserved organic debris, but they include campsite floors and contain numerous features, such as slab-lined pits, concentrations of fire-cracked rock debris, and vein quartz microlith manufacturing areas (Flenniken 1981; Gross 1984, 1986; Howes 1982). Spatial patterns of these remains suggest distinct activity areas, including part of a dwelling (Gross 1986; Howes 1982:119-121). Because of poor preservation, the dry site yielded only stone artifacts, including thick, ground­slate points, bifacially-flaked contracting-stem points, and quartz crystal microblades (Howes 1982:38-49).

The rivermouth rockshelter site (45-CA-21), investigated since 1979, contains over 3.3 vertical meters of relatively undisturbed shell midden. Over 1,300 distinct layers have been recorded, representing several types of depositional features associated with occupations from the historic period back to about 900 B.P. (Peter 1986). High frequencies of fishbone indicate a primary use of roundfish/rockfish, followed by salmon, and only limited ainounts of halibut/flatfish (Wigen 1985; Wigen and Stucki 1988).

The earlier Hoko River wet/dry site, the primary focus of this paper, seems to have served most consistently as a spring and summer halibut/flatfish and Pacific cod/roundfish camp (Croes and Blinman 1980; Croes and Hackenberger 1988). We infer that the rockshelter site was used most consistently as a fall-winter and/or spring station, from which salmon, roundfish, sea mammals, and a variety of other resources were taken (Croes and Hackenberger 1988).

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 design of the sea-bear, which confronts the onlooker with wide-set eyes, bared teeth, and flukes instead of feet. In this paper, I trace the circulation of the tunic’s motifs as graphic art, fabric, and fashion in the mid-twentieth century, a period when North America strove to demonstrate its artistic and economic independence from Europe.
Numerous art-historical studies have investigated modernist painting and sculpture relating to the Pacific Northwest during this time. Other scholars document the vigorous appropriation of indigenous Southwestern and South Pacific idioms in midcentury textile and fashion industries. This paper fills geographic and analytical gaps by surfacing both Native and non-Native efforts in varied design media that drew upon North Pacific aesthetics, and contextualizing them within the entangled networks of art, commercial design, and museum practice in which they emerged.
I show how people such as Cherokee designer Lloyd Kiva New, Tlingit artist Nathan Jackson, and Euro-American architect Paul Thiry adapted the Haida tunic’s crest designs and similar motifs in their modernist experiments. Objects I will analyze include Robert Bruce Inverarity’s 1950 Art of the Northwest Coast Indians, a 1956 Seattle “Native fashion show” program, a Lloyd Kiva New dress, and studio and mass-produced textiles. In following these iterations, I investigate how non-Native adherents of “Northwest Coast art” promoted a local aesthetic while framing regional and national cultural identities. By comparing non-Native projects with the efforts of Indigenous artists to assert their own rights, regionalisms, and market potential through textiles, I plumb tensions between Native American modernisms and broader North American modernism’s use of “the Native” in interlinked art and design worlds.

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 best seen in functional art—tools and household artifacts—forms that Thomas, Paul, and LessLIE have resurrected in decidedly non-traditional, entirely contemporary ways. By combining new and ancient media and materials, Traditional and Post-Modern perspectives and expressions, the artists thrust the subject of Coast Salish design into the forefront of contemporary aesthetic discourse.

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 technology and cultural practice that has been passed down for many thousands of years.  In the past, knowledge about weaving, such as design motifs, has tended to move through genealogical lines, connecting women today to their ancestors of the past.  However, Nuu-chah-nulth women are also transforming this practice--demonstrating that weaving is dynamic and changing.  While weaving connects people to their pasts, I suggest that it is also shaped by the present, by weavers' lives and experiences, and by their anticipation of the future.

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 actively being repressed, beading supported cultural continuity, demonstrating Tlingit women’s resilience, strength, and power. Beadwork served many uses, from the ceremonial to the economic, as women created beaded pieces for community use and to sell to tourists. Like other Tlingit art, beadwork reflects rich artistic visions with deep connections to the environment, clan histories, and Tlingit worldviews. Contemporary Tlingit artists Alison Bremner, Chloe French, Shgen Doo Tan George, Lily Hudson Hope, Tanis S’eiltin, and Larry McNeil foreground the significance of historical beading practices in their diverse, boundary-pushing artworks.

Working with museum collection materials, photographs, archives, and interviews with artists and elders, Megan Smetzer reframes this often overlooked artform as a site of historical negotiations and contemporary inspirations. She shows how beading gave Tlingit women the freedom to innovate aesthetically, assert their clan crests and identities, support tribal sovereignty, and pass on cultural knowledge. Painful Beauty is the first dedicated study of Tlingit beadwork and contributes to the expanding literature addressing women’s artistic expressions on the Northwest Coast.

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 textile design combined Tlingit motifs with expressive color fields and abstract space. Developed under instructors associated with modernist movements such as the Indian Space Painters, Jackson’s relationship with modernism represents an alternative to the neotraditionalism of his contemporaries. However, despite achieving initial acclaim for his experiments in printmaking and painting, Jackson came to reject this aspect of his training in favor of classical Tlingit forms and practices. Jackson’s early oeuvre thus imbricates Euro-American modernism in the history of Northwest Coast Native art alongside the emulation of nineteenth-century forms, and his eventual rejection of modernist styles refutes the relationship between Indigenous and modern art as one of unidirectional appropriation.

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 Nuu-chah-nulth art is limited, some glimpses are examined related to persistent themes and the evolution of the well-known later Nuu-chah-nulth style.