Lelooska: The Life of a Northwest Coast Artist

9. A Family Complex

9 / A Family Complex M ost people associate the coasthouses, the A-frame museum, and the gallery at Ariel, Washington, with the Lelooska family. For Don and his family, those same structures were never separate from the people who created and used them, from what the larger family did and had become at Ariel. Indeed, the family and the buildings contributed mightily to Don’s success as an individual artist. The same forces that generated success—individual expertise, a family identity infused with “being Indian,” and a historical period in which non-Indians became increasingly desirous of “things Indian”—also created stresses. Within the family, individuals understandably tried to define themselves separately from Don, who cast a large, long shadow. Dick and Jay, Don’s brother and nephew, respectively, joined in the artistic enterprise for several years, only to break away from it altogether. Patty, as Don recounts in chapter 3, “Family across the Generations,” tried to expand the gallery beyond the family complex at Ariel. With each of these incidents , Don felt the pebbles that his grandfather and granduncle had pressed into his hands slipping from his grasp. It bothered him that he could not keep everyone happy and secure. He also knew that families have problems, but hoped that his would find its way through such difficult times and come back together. For Don, as with most of us, some complications of life are never resolved. 203 Alongside any internal struggles, by the late 1980s and early 1990s external forces threatened the family’s abilities to pursue the art and programs that its members had embraced for at least three decades. The same strains of exclusive definitions of what an “Indian” is, which fed beliefs that “a Cherokee certainly could not do anything of quality,” from so many years before reemerged in the form of the 1990 Indian Arts and Crafts Act. These trends deeply troubled Don, who sought solace in his own sense of his Indian-ness, his family, and, as so often before, through assistance from a broad and strong network of friends. ARIEL EXPANSIONS We kind of balance each other. We built the A-frame museum in ’72. We decided on the A-frame style because of economics and logistics. It was the best way to get a lot of space using materials that were fairly readily available. I talked to Ralph Bozarth* about it. I was thinking of something rather modest in scope. Ralph likes challenges. So it kind of got bigger and bigger. Ralph went out with his boat and his outboard motor and towed a lot of the big timbers, the uprights, in from the Columbia River, dragged them up on the beach, and got his boat trailer and hauled them in here and stacked them up. He also got a timber sale from the Forest Service and had lumber sawed. The cost was minimal in building it. But it did maximize the space and, interestingly enough, climate-wise, it seems to have been very good for the things that have been in there—pretty constant temperature. If I really have to do a big, big project like a big totem pole or something, we just stick it down the middle of the building and it just becomes part of the stuff to be seen. The bats moved in and they take care of our moth problem. Boy, I thought those rugs were goners. They hadn’t had any care for about five or six years. When I got them down, they were just pristine. You just have to attribute it to those bats in there because they eat a tremendous amount. Then the squirrels moved in. So I sort of made a mental pact where they were conLelooska • 204 * Ralph Bozarth is a family friend who provided invaluable help in the construction of nearly every building at Ariel. cerned: if they didn’t eat the baskets, I wouldn’t poison them. So far they’ve been good! All in all, I suppose we’re environmentally correct on most of it. Smitty used to like to go up and shoot the bats with twenty-two shot shells. That is why we have some daylight coming through, but no water so far. Eventually, I would like to put a metal roof on it because it is a little more fireproof that way and a little tighter.* The other A-frame was built not long after that, and Patty incorporated it...