Pacific Northwest Coast Native Americans

Ethnohistory 2009
In 2003, construction began on a graving dock that would bring marine projects to the Olympic Peninsula and provide family-wage jobs. It appeared to be a good fit for the city of Port Angeles, Washington, and its surrounding communities. Shortly after construction began, workers unearthed an approximately 2,700–year- old Coast Salish village and cemetery, claimed by the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe as an ancestral site. Significantly, indigenous reports of being haunted by the spirits of their disturbed ancestors and nonnative desires to bury the past and move forward resulted in intercultural conflicts and misunderstandings. Such struggles speak to the contested nature of history and the deeply rooted concerns about the region’s socioeconomic future following the decline of natural resource industries.

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.

"Croes describes his type of archaeology as 'generationally-linked.'  His collaboratin with Ed Carriere, Suquamish Elder and Master Basketmaker, brings tools of Western science together with Indigenous knowledge and research approaches to gain a deep understanding of the weavings they have recovered.  They are able to see that ancient knowledge has been handed down through hundreds of generations over thousands of years by comparing the ancient baskets to the techniques used by weavers today.

Consistently, Coast Salish mortuary practices demonstrate one element in common, even as burial customs have developed over the course of the Marpole Period to the present day: resistance to authority and societal pressures. Building upon the seminal work of Suttles (1958), Thom (1995, 1998), and Mathews (2006, 2014), this study offers a comprehensive examination of pre- and post-contact Coast Salish burial practices, as well as their corresponding emphasis on social rank, status, or loss of social stratification as identified in the mortuary record. Beginning with an examination of the evolution of ranked social classes in Marpole and Late Period midden, cairn, and mound burials, I conclude with a detailed discussion of enclosed “grave house” burials (originating with Euro-American contact) and the late nineteenth century development of the Indian Shaker Church to demonstrate how recent burial practices are a reaction to and reflection of settler colonial encroachment upon Coast Salish territories. In doing so, I provide evidence that Coast Salish societies grew increasingly unified against non-Native presence at the turn of the century, exchanging previous individual and class-based social rank systems for community-oriented identification that aided in retaining Coast Salish spirituality, access to land, and kinship networks during times of intense cultural turmoil. Compared to Marpole and Late Periods, which witnessed  fluctuations in status and resistance to elite authority figures, ethnographic Coast Salish burial phases reveal that certain aspects of pre-colonial Coast Salish social structure were sacrificed to foster tribal solidarity against foreign imposition during the Early Colonial era. Using an inter-disciplinary approach advocated by Morris (1992) that combines multiple strands of evidence including grave goods, demography, spatiality, ritual, history, ethnography, and comparative studies, I employ an anthropological lens to analyze the subversive nature of past and present Coast Salish social organization.

"In the Land of the Totem Poles: Native Cultures of the Pacific Northwest.
Native Cultures of Western Alaska and the Pacific Northwest Coast: An Overview of Recent Scholarship,"
An overview essay with reference to scholarship on the cultural history of the Pacific Northwest Coast, co-authored with Laraine Fletcher, in connection with an NEH Institute we co-directed in Alaska and British Columbia in 2010..

Standard genealogies of knowledge posit the circulation of modernity in one direction, from the West to “the rest.” This history reveals the waves of influence flowing the opposite way, from nonstate people to the state. The essay introduces a new method for the history of knowledge that traces the travel of narratives, packets of media containing messages. Masks long viewed as objects of collection are seen here anew as subjects of recollection, mnemonic devices that archive the global propagation of knowledge. One set of masks is reunited with the narratives they encode: stories employed as a survival strategy by the Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw, a network of peoples who utilized the anthropologist Franz Boas as a host body to enter and alter the world that came to colonize them. The efforts of the Indigenous intellectual George Hunt to disseminate the masks—and, with the masks, his family message of transformation—directly shaped the concept of culture. Using the masks as teaching tools, Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw thinkers civilized Boas into a new modernity, shifting him from categorization to communication, from signs to messages, and from a Self/Other perception to a global consciousness of Host–Guest relations. The masks recollect a profound yet long suppressed Indigenous influence on modern thought.

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.

The raven has long held a special place in folklore. Indeed, legend has it that England will fall if ever the ravens leave the Tower of London. In literature, Edgar Allan Poe (1845) and Charles Dickens (1841) were both fascinated by the prophetic symbolism of the raven, as were many other writers including the Brothers Grimm. The raven also plays an important role in Norse mythology, both as a “beast of battle” and the shamanic eyes and ears of Odin. Perched on his shoulder, the twin ravens Huginn and Muninn whisper news of what they see and hear. Across the ocean, the raven plays an equally prominent role in the mythology of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest. Here the raven is considered to be the creator of the world but also a trickster god – “constantly selfish, sly, conniving, and hungry” (AIHF, 2017). At first glance, the raven of the Pacific Northwest is very different from the raven of Norse mythology, yet both share an association with prophetic vision. For example, in Kwakiutl mythology (Croft Long, 1963), boys’ placentas were left exposed so that they might be eaten by ravens, thereby enhancing the boys’ prophetic ability. In this paper, the raven’s role in both Norse mythology and myths of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest will be explored and discussed. Instead of clouding our thinking, it is hoped that such a comparison will provide a valuable counterpoint to our knowledge and understanding of shamanic practice in Norse mythology.

This extraordinary story relates the story of the acquisition of a fabled native Copper by the Tsimshian chief Wasaiks, who was based at the village of  Fort Simpson/Lax-Kw’alaams, British Columbia. Wasaiks developed an overwhelming desire to possess the most valuable thing along the Northwest Coast:  the fabulous copper known as the Nahuhulk.  This copper had passed, in a series of raids and trades, from the Chilkat Tlingit of Haines, Alaska, down the west coast until it fell into the hands of the Stikine Tlingit people at Wrangell, under the leadership of their chief Saiks. In the course of this trade, the copper had accumulated vast value, both economic and spiritual. The Tale was recorded in 1916 by the talented Native ethnographer William Beynon from James Lewis, a resident of the  Ginaxangik Tsimshian village of Kitkatla.

В статье на основе анализа письменных источников XVIII-XIX вв., этнографических коллекций и материалов современных исследований прослеживается динамика изменений комплекса вооружения индейцев-тлинкитов под влиянием контактов с европейцами во второй половине XVIII-середине XIX в. Изначально комплекс вооружения тлинкитов составляли кинжалы, копья, палицы, каменные топоры, лук и стрелы. Защитное вооружение представлено щитами, кожаными и деревянными доспехами и шлемами. Примерно с середины 1790-х годов в связи с активизацией морской торговли с европейцами в комплексе вооружения индейцев происходят резкие изменения. В первую очередь это находит отражение в широком использовании огнестрельного оружия. Из употребления выходят щиты, топоры и палицы, снижается значимость луков и стрел. Во второй четверти XIX в. эти тенденции получают дальнейшее развитие: все большее распространение получают различные разновидности кожаных доспехов, а огнестрельное оружие в этот период начинает играть решающую роль в ведении боевых действий.

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.

In the Pacific Northwest, where masculinity is often romanticized and associated with the luscious, rugged evergreen landscape, problematic gendered and geographic tropes maintain a tight grip. The region’s mountains and waterways are frequently linked to male exploration, adventure, and conquest. Questioning this emphasis on masculinity, this article employs Native case studies from western Washington and southwestern British Columbia—the traditional homelands of Coast Salish tribes—to examine the historical ways in which Coast Salish women interacted with, navigated, and depended upon water in their daily lives. Despite settler colonial attempts to associate femininity with domesticity or docility, Indigenous women were not confined to private spheres or bound to the land. Rather, Coast Salish women were mobile mariners who regularly accessed waterways for trade routes and crop cultivation, as well as for maintaining crucial family ties and economic independence. Activities conducted by women demanded mastery of canoes and careful study of water. Familiarity and interactions with maritime sites allowed Coast Salish women to adeptly adapt to a rapidly changing society introduced by nineteenth-century European arrival. By relying upon waterways, water knowledge, and maritime skills, Indigenous women preserved their cultural authority and autonomy. Citing Coast Salish examples, this article highlights the ways in which Coast Salish women used water to subvert patriarchal and settler colonial expectations of femininity before, during, and after the early colonial period.

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.

Culturally modified trees (CMTs) provide tangible evidence of long-term forest use by Indigenous peoples. In Northwest Coast cedar forests, this record rarely spans beyond the last three centuries because older bark-harvest scars have been obscured through taphonomic processes such as natural healing and decay. Thus, archaeological visibility and identification are hindered. Here, I recover chronologies of ancient forest harvesting using a post-impact assessment methodology of targeting old-growth clear-cuts in southern Nuu-chah-nulth territories on the west coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. Bark-peeling scars are identified and dated in cross section by growth-ring patterns of recently logged trees. Approximately half of all bark-peeling scars are "embedded" inside healing lobes, suggesting at least half of all such CMTs are effectively invisible in standing forests. Features in these post-impact surveys predated those discovered in conventional archaeological impact assessments by a mean of almost a century. Additionally, one of the oldest continually used cultural forests ever recorded, dating to AD 908, is found in the Toquaht Nation traditional territory. These findings uncover measurable frequencies of cedar-bark harvesting generations prior to the contact period and reveal the inadequacy of heritage protections for old-growth cedar stands.

Los árboles culturalmente modificados (CMTs por sus siglas en inglés) proporcionan evidencia tangible del uso a largo plazo del cedro por parte de los pueblos Indígenas. En el noroeste del Pacífico, este registro rara vez se extiende más allá de los últimos tres siglos o la duración de vida potencial de los bosques circundantes. Se ha pensado que las cicatrices culturales más antiguas en el cedro están ocultas a través de procesos de curación natural o deterioro a lo largo del tiempo, lo cual impide su identificación. Aquí recupero cronologías de usos antiguos de bosques a través de las "evaluaciones post-impacto" de recientes recortes claros de bosque de viejo crecimiento en el sur de los territorios de Nuu-chah-nulth en la costa oeste de la Isla de Vancouver, Columbia Británica, Canadá. Las cicatrices de peladura de la corteza se identifican y datan en sección trans-versal según el patrón de crecimiento del anillo dentro de los árboles recientemente talados. Encuentro que la mitad de todas las cicatrices de peladura de la corteza de los cedros están "incrustadas" dentro de lóbulos de curación e invisibles dentro de un bosque en pie. Se encontró que las características de estas evaluaciones post-impacto son anteriores, en promedio, a las des-cubiertas en las evaluaciones de impacto arqueológico (AIAs por sus siglas en inglés) convencionales de casi un siglo. Uno de los bosques culturales de uso continuo más antiguo jamás registrado, que data de 908 dC, se encuentra en la Primera Nación Toquaht. Los hallazgos descubren frecuencias medibles de las actividades humanas generaciones anteriores al período de con-tacto y revelan la insuficiencia de las protecciones del patrimonio regional para las masas de cedro de viejo crecimiento.

Contribution in a volume on a research project funded by BMBF in 2009-2102.
"The volume as a whole attests to the power and importance of historical collections to communities of origin as well as to contemporary artists and museums. It also shows the great distance both geographically and in methodology between Europe and the Northwest Coast." [Kathryn Bunn-Marcuse, Anthropos]
"Mit "Northwest Coast Representations" ist den Herausgebern jedoch ein wichtiges Werk zu Repräsentation und Museumsethnologie anhand einer der bedeutendsten Nordamerika-Sammlungen der Welt gelungen, das auch für diejenigen interessant sein dürfte, die sich mit ähnlichen Fragen beschäftigen, ohne konkrete Interessen an der Region zu haben. Dies zeigt, dass die Nordamerika-Ethnologie im wissenschaftlichen Diskurs nicht vergessen werden sollte."
[Markus H. Lindner, Paideuma]

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.

The adjacent linguistic families, the Wakashan, Chemakuans, and Salishans (jointly referred to as the Mosan groups), are located on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State and southwestern coast of Vancouver Island, BC, Canada.  This study attempts to: (1) review the work done in establishing the linguistic similarities in the Mosan groups, (2) discuss cultural comparisons of non-linguistic data using linguistically relevant data where possible, and (3) discuss linguistic and other data concerning the relationship of the adjacent Mosan groups through time and space.

WSU Graduate School paper, 1973, done for Linguistic Anthropology class (Anth. 555) in class taught by Dr. James A. Goss

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.

Introduction and two reprints of  A. Jacobsen's travelogue and "Unter den Alaska Eskimos: J. Adrian Jacobsen (1853-1947), a Norwegian sailor from near Trömso who described himself as a “captain”, was commissioned by Adolf Bastian, the founder of the Berlin Ethnographic Museum, to make a collecting trip to the American northwest coast of British Columbia (Canada) and northern Alaska (USA) between 1881 and 1883. While his collection of some 7,000 objects from that trip and his work have repeatedly been the subject of research, the original German version of his travelogue, packed with information on his journey and collection, has not yet been reprinted. From San Francisco, Jacobsen visited Vancouver Island, the Haida Gwaii (ex Queen Charlotte Islands) and the Victoria region. He not only to made purchases from the Kwakiutl (Kwakwaka'wakw), Haida Gwaii, Bella Coola (Nuxalk) etc., but also to study the practices and rituals, dances and performances that were part of them. The adventurous character of Jacobsen's stay on the Northwest Coast is far exceeded by the expedition in the inhospitable harsh and cold north of Alaska, in Norton Sound, the Kuskokwim and Yukon area with the Yup'ik Eskimo, Ingalik and Tanaina Indians. Jacobsen purchased everything he could in stops that could last as little as an hour. His collection was soon considered so representative and unique that critical voices were raised in the USA and Canada against this “sell-out” by a European.

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.

Among indigenous communities on west coast of Vancouver Island intellectual genealogies actively shape cultural and familial knowledge, beliefs, practices, and relationships. As an anthropologist working on Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations' haahuulthii (traditional territory), I became part of internal and external genealogies of knowledge: one genealogy connecting me to interlocutors and their families, and a second associating me with earlier anthropologists. Three years into my fieldwork I learned about a predecessor, Dr. Susan Golla, who conducted research for her doctorate in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Just as her predecessor, Edward Sapir, had passed away before publishing much of his Nuu-chah-nulth research, Dr. Golla died shortly after completing her doctorate. Her family and colleagues donated her records to the American Philosophical Society’s archives in the mid 1990s.

Dr. Golla insisted upon ethnographic treatment of archival documents, arguing that “special potential” and “special problems” surface in native-authored, ethnographically-collected, texts (Golla 1988: 107).  She wanted to bring “ethnographic sophistication” to archival analysis, breathing life into source material through contextualization. These nuanced source materials, she contended, were curtailed by translation and decontextualization. In this article, I bring together a reflection on my ethnographic practice and what I have learned through the archival record and contemporary remembrances of Dr. Golla. I draw from interviews with her family, colleagues, informants, and her research participants' children and grandchildren to situate Dr. Golla’s archive.  I examine the archive's impact on contemporary ethnographic practice and, through digital knowledge-sharing, the lives of Nuu-chah-nulth people today.

First deatiled article on the strong relationships between Germany and Russia (Russian America) during the time of the Russian exploration of Alaska and the Northwest Coast, and the role of German explorers, scholars and travelers in the foundation of Russian America. Basing on the special case of the collections in German museums, the article provides overall analysis and interpretation of the background of the German involvement in the Russian American ventures in the 18th and 19th centuries.

This WSU Graduate School paper attempts to explain trade and contact relationships found in late prehistoric and early White contact periods among the Pacific Drainage Athapascans and the Northwest Coast of North America. The locations and subdivisions of these regional bands are shown on the following map, page 2 (after Osgood, 1958). The specific Athapascan and Coastal regions dealt with here are colored in yellow. The Atha­pascan regions will be handled consecutively, and certain regions will be grouped because of their interconnection with particular trade re­gions. The routes of trade, trade goods, and processes of exchange will be most of the criteria examined here, yet the cultural relationships, during this time period, will be the important data considered here, for it is in the realm of their relationships that they established their contacts. In other words, each group had culturally shared ideas on how to approach and exchange with other cultural groups, and these cultural connections for this time period will be considered important here following the assumption that the cultural view of groups towards trade resources from other groups can be considered similar to their cultural views towards other environmental resources sought by the group; the main difference being they have to develop, patterns towards other cultures rather than towards the environment. The important ques­tion here then is how were these cultural relationships characterized between the different regions and particularly between the coast and in­terior? It will be seen that the factors answering this question vary between each regional band and also varies through time.

During Fall 2016 students in Thomas W Murphy’s Cultural Anthropology course conducted oral history interviews to help document Edmonds Community College’s involvement with Indigenous communities in honor of the college’s fiftieth anniversary. A student team of Marshall Britton, Stuart Cosgrove, and Diego Chavez prepared questions under their instructor’s guidance and then Stuart interviewed Dale Croes at the Burke Museum on the University of Washington’s campus on November 21st. Dale had a surprise guest with him, the Suquamish basket weaver Ed Carriere who contributed some of his reflections to the interview as well.

Verbal Ink transcribed the interview. The transcript below has been reviewed and edited by the interviewers, the interviewee, and Dr. Thomas Murphy.

Dale was an adjunct faculty member in Anthropology at Edmonds CC from 1990 – 1994. During that time he facilitated partnerships with Tulalip Tribes and Indian Heritage High School. He left Edmonds CC for an illustrious career at South Puget Sound Community College where he continued to work in collaboration with local tribes on a variety of archaeological and cultural projects.

This interview is part of the Community Oral History Project led by the Anthropology Department at Edmonds CC. The transcripts from this and similar interviews that help document diverse local histories are archived at:
https://edcc.academia.edu/ThomasMurphy/Oral-Histories.

The underlying question in this essay asks, "who are the 'wolves' within a museum?" What do Northwest Coast Indigenous belongings conveyed about Indigenous values, about wolves, and about non-Indigenous peoples? Wolves can be relatives, ancestors, and descendants. Humans can elect to value them as equals or as others. If, like Ḳi-Ḳe-In, one considers the belongings from this exhibition as witnesses and participants then what shared experiences are exposed? What will be carried forward to a next exhibition, or the next generation? All of the artists here discussed have attempted to directly address non-Native audiences. It must be helpful that wolves have large ears, “all the better to hear you with.”
For the English version contact the author.

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.