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Page 25 March–April 2009 Moving Up the Totem Duane Niatum S’abadeb—The Gifts: Pacific Coast Salish Art and Artists Edited by Barbara Brotherton Seattle Art Museum http://www.seattleartmuseum.org University of Washington Press http://www.washington.edu/uwpress 280 pages; paper, $40.00 Our way of giving and sharing was not reciprocated by the pioneers or by Washington Territorial Governor Isaac Stevens, who came to sign treaties with the Indians and with Chief Sealth’s people. Our chief gave welcome but the governor was here to take Indian lands. The Duwamish Tribe was the first signer to the Point Elliott Treaty in January 1855. The famous treaty gave us the right to continue to fish in our usual and accustomed places and also set aside land for us to live in peace; provided educational, medical, and housing monies; and, most importantly, assigned monies to pay us for the land ceded. These promises were never realized. —Cecile Hansen, Chairwoman of the Duwamish Tribe S’abadeb—The Gifts is an important contribution to the study of Coast Salish art and culture of giving for many reasons: one, such an extensive overview of the arts and culture of Salish people, the Seattle -Vancouver-Victoria region, has never been done before; two, the book offers significant issues, such as identity, historical change, and cultural revival, and uses Salish visual art as a point of departure and a point of return. The catalogue shows how the arts are grounded in the social and cultural foundations of their tribes, and three, the manner in which art links past, present, and future. The book was published in conjunction with a show at the Seattle Art Museum which will travel to The Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona and to The Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria, B.C. These various artworks in the show and the book are gifts that were given by the artists and tribes over and over again, while the whites never gave anything in return. But the whites knew how to take things, like the land, and they turned this taking into a methodical science. We learn that an earlier generation of artists was determined to recapture Coast Salish arts that were nearly lost because of rapid urbanization and forced disruption of tribal lifeways. The book details the ways in which the Pacific Northwest Coast Salish believe that works of art are gifts freely given to inspire, uplift, and instruct. Above all, art is created as a legacy for future generations. Traditionally, the Coast Salish never thought of art as a commodity but rather as a gift offered another.Yet the contemporary artists from the region have had to deal with many important changes in their lifes and art. They may still produce art for social and ceremonial reasons, but they also produce art as a commodity for public consumption. And their elders and ancestors would certainly be amazed at what new challenges the artists and communities face in our age. The evolution of their traditional arts would appear like a dream to them. But the Old Ones would know that art needs to grow in new directions, and they would welcome such innovation in the long run. The arts changed even in historical times, and the elders know this. The art objects in the book are quite diverse, made of many materials and have many uses. Carved objects include canoes and paddles, prehistoric human figure bowls and oil dishes made from wood and soapstone, plank drums, house posts and spindle whorls, and traditional and contemporary bent-boxes (one by Andy Wilbur-Peterson, Skokomish /Squaxin, made of red cedar, paint, he calls The Naming Ceremony). Rattles from different tribes are made of wood or mountain sheep horn, sinews , and buttons, formed in a variety of figurative shapes. Robes and blankets are made from sheep’s wool and natural dyes, and cedar is woven into mats. The book shows cotton cloth, blanket pins, and baskets, historical and contemporary , from several tribes, and combs, bracelets, a conical rain hat from 1840 made of spruce root, red cedar bark, and paint. Robes and dresses are also shown, both historical and contemporary. The Coast Salish...

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