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Course: Art of the Americas to World War I > Unit 5
Lesson 5: Northwest coast & Arctic- Tsimshian shaman’s rattle
- Reclaiming history, a Kwakwaka'wakw belt
- Transformation masks
- North Wind Mask
- Sea monster transformation mask
- Nuu-Chah-Nulth Mask Frontlet of the Wolf Dance
- Haida totem pole, from Old Kasaan
- Haida potlatch pole
- Bentwood Boxes of the Northwest Coast peoples
- Tlingit mortuary and memorial totem poles
- Proud Raven totem pole at Saxman Totem Park
- The story of the Oyster Man, a Tlingit totem pole
- The Chief Johnson Totem Pole
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Reclaiming history, a Kwakwaka'wakw belt
The Story Box Exhibition showcases a ceremonial belt from the Kwakwaka'wakw people, featuring a sisiutl motif. This belt, worn during dances and potlatch ceremonies, symbolizes inherited privileges. The exhibition also explores the Kwakwaka'wakw's performance at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, a significant act of cultural preservation during a time when their ceremonies were banned in Canada. Ceremonial belt (Kwakwaka'wakw), late 19th century, wood, cotton, paint, and iron (Field Museum, Chicago), an ARCHES video Special thanks to Aaron Glass, the Bard Graduate Center, and the U’mista Cultural Centre, and Corrine Hunt Speakers: Dr. Aaron Glass and Dr. Steven Zucker. Created by Smarthistory.
Want to join the conversation?
- what was the reason Canada had to outlaw those specific native dances? or do they even have a good reason?
Just wondering.(3 votes)- In pre-modern times, it's an exceedingly common motif to either assimilate or eliminate the cultures of conquered territories and by extent, the peoples living there.(2 votes)
Video transcript
(gentle music) - [Steve] I'm in the Bard Graduate Center at the Story Box Exhibition
with Aaron Glass, the curator of the exhibition,
looking at a ceremonial belt. - [Aaron] This belt, made
in the late 19th century by a Kwakwaka'wakw artist, people who were formerly
known as Kwakiutl, was worn ceremonially in dance
or in potlatch ceremonies. - [Steven] The potlatch was
an extremely important complex of ceremonies that is central to life in the northwest coast. - [Aaron] Just the
wearing of belts like this would have signaled the privileges that the dancer would have inherited from either their parents or
through marriage exchange. Both the two serpent heads and
the human head are signaled by these spiraling horns
on the top of their heads, common on sisiutl motifs. And the sisiutl is a
two-headed sea monster. In stories of the sisiutl, contact with its blood would
turn a person to stone. One of the contexts in which
you see sisiutl motifs danced are in the Hawinallal, a warrior's dance. For warriors, the fact that
the sisiutl turns you to stone protects the warrior from
arrows of his enemies. - [Steven] You said that the
face in the center was human, and it does not immediately
strike me as fully human, in part because of the horns, but also because of the
blue spots, the blue eyes. That face, along with the
serpent's, feel terrifying. - [Aaron] You do often
see both the humanoid face and the serpent heads in sisiutl motifs, with rows of sharp teeth,
with grimacing faces. The menacing quality may be tied both to the supernatural
powers of the sisiutl, they were powerful and dangerous, and to the military
prowess of the warriors. it's hard to interpret what
the middle humanoid face on sisiutl representations indicates: possibly a relationship
with the human wearer of this particular belt,
possibly with humanoid ancestors who had encounters with
actual sisiutl in the sea. We don't know. - [Steven] There are three units of wood, each attached together by
cloth, which wrap around, and the colors are gorgeous. There's that vibrant blue,
the blacks and the reds, all highlighted against the
natural tones of the wood that really offsets the added color. - [Aaron] The treatment of
this belt is characteristic of similar kinds of objects we
see in the late 19th century, many of which were painted
with black, red, and blue. In this case, I believe
all of these pigments were commercially manufactured. - [Steven] I think that
we have this prejudice to want pre-industrial when we
look at Native American art, but of course, Native American art, like every other people's art, is transformed and evolves constantly. The belt is surrounded by a small black-and-white photograph. - [Aaron] This photograph
was published in 1897 in Franz Boas's groundbreaking
ethnographic volume, "The Social Organization,
and the Secret Societies of the Kwawiutl Indians." The Story Box exhibition
is the story of that book and the work that Franz Boas did with his indigenous
collaborator, George Hunt, to write that book. In the book, we see what's captioned as a dance of the chief
of the Hun'a'lino clan. We now know that this
man's name was Gwayutalas. This dance occurred in 1893
at the Chicago World's Fair. - [Steven] And that's quite a distance from where this man lived. He lived in Fort Rupert,
which is on Vancouver Island in British Columbia in Canada, but here he is displaying
the ceremonial bow, and behind that in the
photograph, you can see the belt, but you don't see the context in which this was photographed. It looks as if this man
is standing on a hill with a sky in back of him. - The original photograph
showed the immediate context. We clearly see Gwayutalas performing in front of his Kwakwaka'wakw compatriots in front of the leather
and shoe trades building at the Chicago World's Fair. Gwayutalas was one member
of about 20 Kwakwaka'wakw who were hired to perform
at the Chicago World's Fair by Franz Boas. Boas in turn hired his
collaborator, George Hunt. Hunt assembled the troupe primarily from his own
family and social contacts in and around Fort Rupert. The troupe members were
paid to be at the fair. They demonstrated dances,
sang songs, made crafts, which they sold to fairgoers. They lived on the fairgrounds
for about seven months, and while they were there, they worked closely with both
Franz Boas and George Hunt to record a lot of their
traditional culture. - [Steven] That seems so
deeply uncomfortable to me. I hope we would never
do such a thing again, that is, put people on display
as if they were objects. - [Aaron] One of the things
our exhibition raises is how much agency did they
have in their exhibition. We know they were paid,
they went voluntarily, but at that time, the potlatch
and the ceremonial dances that they were doing at the
fair were outlawed in Canada as part of the Canadian
government's prohibition of the potlatch and
part of federal efforts to assimilate indigenous peoples into modern Canadian society. - [Steven] Imagine having
the central features of your culture outlawed. - [Aaron] By the end of the 19th century, when this group of 20
Kwakwaka'wakw decided to live at the Chicago World's Fair for 1893, the potlatch ban had
already been in effect for over a decade, and people were starting to
be arrested for participating in dances and ceremonies. - [Steven] So performing
in the United States, where the potlatch was not illegal, could be seen as a form of resistance. - [Aaron] They found ways to
do it despite the prohibition and making artwork and performing dances at the Chicago World's Fair
was one of those strategies. By 1951, when the
potlatch ban was dropped, the Kwakwaka'wakw were among
the first first nations of the northwest coast
to bring the potlatch back out into the public. - [Steven] And as Corrine
Hunt has put so beautifully, the work that Boas did
with her great grandfather, George Hunt, became a repository
of knowledge, imperfect, but nevertheless important, that helped people overcome the disruption that was a result of the prohibitions that had been imposed by Canada. - [Aaron] Part of the story
of the Story Box is the role of that book for Kwakwaka'wakw today. Our team of anthropologists is working with community members to do the work of cultural and linguistic revitalization. - [Steven] And to give a
careful, more nuanced context for objects like this. - [Aaron] In the book,
Boas does not mention the Chicago World's Fair
as the context for dances, for the display of this regalia, for the production of the photograph that became the book plate. - [Steven] It's interesting to think about what Franz Boaz's motivation was in literally erasing everything around it so that the illusion is maintained this was shot in British Columbia. - [Aaron] The photographic documentation becomes a kind of authentic
ethnographic illustration for Boas that belies a
very complicated history of photographic production
of performance for money outside of ceremonial contexts,
of art display and use that's much more complicated than we would imagine
just reading Boas's book. - [Steven] It seems to
me that Boas was intent on making sure that these
people were represented in a preindustrial context, ignoring the fact that they were members of the modern world. They were using industrial pigments. They were in Chicago. But all of that had to be
erased in order to satisfy our appetite for the authentic. - [Aaron] Despite his
efforts to physically erase the fairground context from this plate, a close examination reveals
that under his regalia, Gwayutalas is wearing Western
trousers and a Western shirt, even at the same time as they were keeping their
cultural traditions alive. - [Steven] First nations in the northwest had come into contact with
Europeans centuries before. The Russians and the
British had made contact as early as the late 18th century, but what this really reveals
is how fragile the illusions that we try to maintain really are. (gentle music)