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To Teach Who We Are: Symbol and Identity in Northwest Coast Indian Art
| Article
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11170 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1993 |
2,926 Words |
| Author
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Lowell D. Holmes
Lowell D. Holmes is professor and chairman of the Department
of Anthropology at Wichita State University. |
Can anyone gaze up at a soaring totem pole without a feeling of awe and a special respect for its creator? The art of the Northwest Coast Indians has long been recognized as one of the world's most spectacular traditions. But, today there is great concern among the indigenous people of the Northwest Coast about the loss of vital arts, rituals, and social traditions. Tlingit elder Richard King maintains that the children of his tribe are not knowledgeable about the rudiments of their social organization or artistic heritage. He recently stated, "My wife and I go into the schools to teach the children. We ask each child what clan he is from. Some children say, 'Maybe a mouse. Maybe a cat.'" As there are no such clan identifications, he adds, "It's time to teach them who they are, who we are."
Northwest coastal societies
The Native American people who inhabit the narrow coastal area from the Columbia River to Yakutat Bay in Alaska are descendants of nomadic Paleolithic hunters who entered North America from Siberia via the Bering Strait land bridge more than twelve thousand years ago. They were well established in their sedentary lifestyle by 3000 B.C. The region, known to anthropologists as the Northwest Coast culture area, is the home of numerous tribal groups. Though racially similar they speak over forty languages, only two of which are related to languages spoken elsewhere.
In the south are the homelands of the Coast Salish and the famous whaling people called the Makah. To the north are equally skilled hunters of whale, the Nootka; next are the Southern Kwakiutl, the Bella Coola, and the Northern Kwakiutl. Seaward, on the Queen Charlotte Islands, are the Haida and the Kaigani Haida, and between what is today Prince Rupert, British Columbia, and Ketchikan, Alaska, are sandwiched the Tsimshian. To the north of them are the Tlingit, whose territory extended as far as two hundred miles north of what is today Alaska's capital, Juneau.
Along this coastal strip, nearly twelve hundred miles long, the people evolved cultures remarkably homogeneous in life-style and artistic expression. This similarity is the result of a long history of trade and intertribal cultural borrowing. Variations exist in house types, social organization, and religious practices, but generalizations can be made for the area. Nearly everywhere the people lived in permanent settlements along rivers or in protected coves. Their great communal dwellings, constructed out of cedar planks, housed extended families headed by a chief whose influence came from his
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