Lelooska: The Life of a Northwest Coast Artist

Conclusion

Conclusion M any people have mourned Don Lelooska Smith’s passing, whether they knew him as an artist, a storyteller and performer, a friend, or a family member. No doubt a great number celebrate Don’s exceptional achievements. They look to his career as a consummate carver. His art and sculptural forms grace numerous homes of private collectors and hang on many corporate walls. The Oregon Historical Society portrays his work prominently in its entryways and halls, even using it in some of its advertising. Museums around the country continue to display his work, and art galleries still sell it. The powerful connections Don made to Makah and Kwakiutl individuals were as exceptional as his artistic attainments. During his life, tribes such as the Makah and Kwakiutl used his creations as a means to express and celebrate their cultures. Many Makah saw their powerful and vital essence represented in the Cha’chik figure he carved during one of the Indian Arts and Crafts Board demonstrations at Neah Bay. They saw a kindred spirit in Don as they told him whaling stories and shared private glimpses of a grand whaling canoe and its associated paraphernalia. These events took place more than forty years after Makahs had ceased their whaling activities, but the deep meaning of whaling for them had not abated. Although Don did not trigger a renaissance in Makah whaling culture, his presence and activities confirmed what was already taking 231 place. His stories about that experience offer compelling evidence that whaling was never “dead” for many Makahs, a point of great significance during the whaling controversies of the mid- and late 1990s. Don also connected in intimate and personal ways with the prominent Kwakiutl Sewid family. Don and Jimmy developed a fraternal bond that sustained a friendship born of mutual respect and even need. Don needed Jimmy to provide legitimacy to and authority for the production of Northwest Coast masks and their use in performances. Without that sanction, Don would still have been an artist, but would have suffered from nagging doubts about trespassing on others’ territories. For Jimmy’s part, adopting Don and conferring rights and privileges on him gave Jimmy access to a skilled carver; it kept certain names, rights, and privileges within his family’s domain; and it fit into a larger Kwakiutl pattern of the deliberate, public, and very political performance of culture. The programs at Ariel matched Don’s artistic achievements and his successful relations with certain Indian tribes. The programs were a curious mix of entrepreneurial activity and sincere educational outreach. Don was open about the ways that ticket sales filled in slack times. He was also explicit about how the programs brought in potential customers. In the shows, however, no member of the family ever pitched their art explicitly . It was there for all to view, to see in action. If audience members spent money at the family gallery or put in orders for masks, poles, or jewelry, it was of their own initiative. Had Don done the evening shows only for adults and families, one could be more suspicious of his motives. The fact that he and the family did shows for thousands of schoolchildren each year for decades generated ticket sales, but, more importantly, it educated people about Native Americans. Don was such a powerful raconteur that these performances may well stand as his most lasting legacy. People remember him and the stories he told. In all these aspects, Don was clearly exceptional, but it is useful to see his life in the context of twentieth-century developments for Native Americans as well as for Native American art. At critical moments, paths opened up for Don that he chose to take, and that made all the difference. Don came of age during an era of resurgent tribal power, and he was not immune to it. Don, and apparently his grandfather, worried about “vanishing ” cultures of Native American tribes. In the first half of the twenLelooska • 232 tieth century, such notions were ubiquitous. Indians and non-Indians alike believed that the knowledge of older generations was passing away before their eyes. Anthropologists took great pains to “salvage” these cultures before they were lost. In a sense, Don and his grandfather did the same as they conducted their own ethnographies during their many meetings with Enoch Hinkle’s friends, or later in Don’s life as he ran his “mental tape recorder” during his conversations with Native people from many...