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Arts of the Northwest Coast
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Arts of the Northwest Coast

A special issue of Arts (ISSN 2076-0752).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 October 2023) | Viewed by 18994

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Kathryn Bunn-Marcuse

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of art history, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
Interests: American Indian/Native American; digital humanities; First Nations; Indigenous; material culture; Pacific Northwest; Oceanic Aart; Indigenous Body adornment; ethnographic films
Dr. Miranda Belarde-Lewis

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
iSchool, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
Interests: American Indian/Native American; Indigenous knowledge systems; digital humanities; First Nations; Indigenous; material culture; Pacific Northwest; curation and museology; sovereignty

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We invite papers for a Special Issue of Arts focused on Northwest Coast arts. Open to any time period and geographical scope ranging from SE Alaska to the Columbia River, we encourage both historical content and contemporary art and issues. Papers that reach across time to connect past and current creations and issues are particularly welcome. Along with the study of material creations, other aesthetic practices that connect the visual and performing or literary arts are welcome. Bringing visual arts back into connections with the holistic systems of knowledge creation and expression is a key feature of Indigenous art histories confronting the fragmentation of relations between people, knowledge, and art forms that has been a hallmark of colonial collecting and subsequent exhibition and publications of Indigenous arts; papers that examine these practices and demonstrate Indigenous methodologies are welcome.

Dr. Kathryn Bunn-Marcuse
Dr. Miranda Belarde-Lewis
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Arts is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Northwest Coast arts
  • First Nations
  • Indigenous Art history
  • material culture

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Further information on MDPI's Special Issue polices can be found here.

Published Papers (7 papers)

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Research

21 pages, 45946 KiB  
Article
Replacing Settler Spaces: The Transformational Power of Indigenous Public Art
by Megan A. Smetzer
Arts 2024, 13(2), 60; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts13020060 - 28 Mar 2024
Viewed by 3034
Abstract
Similar to 19th-century steamship travel, 21st-century cruise ships link far-flung communities for visitors to the Pacific Northwest Coast. Contemporary Indigenous artists, like their ancestors before them, have transformed touristic curiosity into economic, educational and cultural opportunities for their communities. Public art has become [...] Read more.
Similar to 19th-century steamship travel, 21st-century cruise ships link far-flung communities for visitors to the Pacific Northwest Coast. Contemporary Indigenous artists, like their ancestors before them, have transformed touristic curiosity into economic, educational and cultural opportunities for their communities. Public art has become an increasingly important site for engaging visitors who have only a few hours to spend on shore. This paper compares two public art projects—Juneau, Alaska’s Kootéeyaa Deiyí (Totem Pole Trail) and Vancouver, British Columbia’s Blanketing the City—to explore the multivalent ways in which public art expresses Indigenous sovereignty. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Arts of the Northwest Coast)
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26 pages, 10858 KiB  
Article
Local Fabric: Mid-Century Modernisms, Textile and Fashion Design, and the Northwest Coast, 1940–1967
by Laura J. Allen
Arts 2024, 13(2), 52; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts13020052 - 11 Mar 2024
Viewed by 2451
Abstract
In the mid-twentieth century, growing North American textile and ready-to-wear industries vigorously appropriated Native American aesthetics to cultivate a commercial and design identity apart from Europe. Most studies of the circulation of Indigenous idioms in these industries focus on Southwestern or South Pacific [...] Read more.
In the mid-twentieth century, growing North American textile and ready-to-wear industries vigorously appropriated Native American aesthetics to cultivate a commercial and design identity apart from Europe. Most studies of the circulation of Indigenous idioms in these industries focus on Southwestern or South Pacific regionalisms, and scholarship on studio and commercial fabric and fashion design from the Northwest Coast in the twentieth century is limited. This paper contributes by raising Indigenous and non-Indigenous use of Northwest Coast design forms during the politically turbulent 1940s–1960s and analyzing the impact of this aesthetic vocabulary within broader North American textiles and fashion. Throughout, I engage with the approaches of critical fashion theory and multiple modernisms, considering the frictions of property and power relations within settler-colonial states, then and now. Drawing from study of objects, periodicals, and archival materials as well as first-person perspectives, I contextualize these representations within entangled art, museum, and design worlds in the Northwest Coast, New York City, and the Southwest. My examination illustrates that Northwest Coast artists and art ideas asserted a peripheral but locatable role in mid-century textiles and fashion, facilitating the development of today’s robust Indigenous fashion network on the Northwest Coast and its cultural politics. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Arts of the Northwest Coast)
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11 pages, 3011 KiB  
Article
Gudáang ‘láa Hl ḵíiyanggang: I Am Finding Joy in Haida Repatriation and Research
by Lucy Bell Sdahl Ḵ’awaas
Arts 2023, 12(6), 242; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12060242 - 21 Nov 2023
Viewed by 2505
Abstract
Over 12,000 Haida belongings and 500 Haida ancestral remains were collected and locked away in museums at the height of colonization in the late 1800s to early 1900s. It has been my lifelong quest to undo the colonial harm done to my Ancestors [...] Read more.
Over 12,000 Haida belongings and 500 Haida ancestral remains were collected and locked away in museums at the height of colonization in the late 1800s to early 1900s. It has been my lifelong quest to undo the colonial harm done to my Ancestors and their belongings. With gudáang ‘láa, (joy) as a foundational philosophy and methodology, I am researching and telling the story of Haida repatriation and reconciliatory work with museums. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Arts of the Northwest Coast)
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19 pages, 1986 KiB  
Article
“Life Is a Poem”: Oral Literary and Visual Arts of the Northwest Coast
by Ishmael Khaagwáask’ Hope
Arts 2023, 12(6), 228; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12060228 - 31 Oct 2023
Viewed by 1861
Abstract
Elder Nora Marks Dauenhauer, Kheixwnéi, a poet and oral literary scholar and a mentor of the author, told the author “Life is a poem”. This essay will explore the ways in which the oral literary and visual arts of the Northwest Coast interact, [...] Read more.
Elder Nora Marks Dauenhauer, Kheixwnéi, a poet and oral literary scholar and a mentor of the author, told the author “Life is a poem”. This essay will explore the ways in which the oral literary and visual arts of the Northwest Coast interact, how artists across multiple disciplines attain knowledge and develop as artists, and the ways in which the arts sing the poetry of Tlingit life. Examining the relationship between the arts will deepen one’s understanding of each art and illuminate how they inform and enrich one another. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Arts of the Northwest Coast)
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19 pages, 100755 KiB  
Article
Manifesting Rights on Cloth: Regalia and Relations on the Northwest Coast
by Kathryn Bunn-Marcuse
Arts 2023, 12(5), 216; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12050216 - 13 Oct 2023
Viewed by 2451
Abstract
Using buttons and beads sewn on wool and calico, Northwest Coast First Nations women fashion the robes and aprons essential to ongoing expressions of inherited prerogatives and rights. Each piece of regalia is carefully crafted to include signifying materials and motifs, telling of [...] Read more.
Using buttons and beads sewn on wool and calico, Northwest Coast First Nations women fashion the robes and aprons essential to ongoing expressions of inherited prerogatives and rights. Each piece of regalia is carefully crafted to include signifying materials and motifs, telling of the origins or relations of their owners. These creations exist as part of a holistic system that integrates material artworks within ceremony, including song, dance, and oratory, which in turn uphold the laws expressed through potlatching. Shifting scholarly focus from Northwest Coast carving traditions, this paper recenters textile arts within a holistic, culturally focused context while addressing issues of gender, the effects of colonial practices, and the damage wrought by salvage anthropology as it fragmented cultural information across archives. Women’s artistic productions embody long-held technical and aesthetic knowledge connected to oral histories and cultural practices. Restoring Indigenous perspectives connecting tangible and intangible cultural heritage counterbalances the aesthetic emphasis that has dominated Northwest Coast art history. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Arts of the Northwest Coast)
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14 pages, 31722 KiB  
Article
Knowledge Repatriation: A Pilot Project about Making Cedar Root Baskets
by Sharon M. Fortney
Arts 2023, 12(5), 198; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12050198 - 12 Sep 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2362
Abstract
This paper describes the first phase of a Coast Salish Knowledge Repatriation Project being coordinated by the Curator of Indigenous Collections and Engagement at the Museum of Vancouver, within the unceded, ancestral territories of the xʷməθkʷəýəm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) nations. [...] Read more.
This paper describes the first phase of a Coast Salish Knowledge Repatriation Project being coordinated by the Curator of Indigenous Collections and Engagement at the Museum of Vancouver, within the unceded, ancestral territories of the xʷməθkʷəýəm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) nations. The goal of this knowledge repatriation work is to support cultural revitalization and language renewal through activities that generate learning opportunities for community members. These activities pivot around knowledge that has been lost due to urbanization, forced assimilation efforts, and other colonial activities that may have restricted access to traditional lands and resources, preventing knowledge transmission. This work is about shifting the focus from extractive projects, that benefit external audiences, to one that supports capacity building and cultural renewal within communities. This essay describes a project to reintroduce coiled cedar root basketry into communities within the Greater Vancouver area in the province of British Columbia, Canada. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Arts of the Northwest Coast)
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16 pages, 4319 KiB  
Article
“Once the Fire Starts Then There Is No Stopping It”: The Revitalization of Chinookan Art in the 21st Century, Conversations with Greg A. Robinson
by Jon D. Daehnke and Greg A. Robinson
Arts 2023, 12(5), 185; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12050185 - 31 Aug 2023
Viewed by 2924
Abstract
Chinookan art centered on the Lower Columbia River and was created by Chinookan-speaking people living along the river and its tributaries. The style is unique, focusing on geometric forms, numerical patterns, and anatomical representation. It is embedded in Chinookan mythology and differs considerably [...] Read more.
Chinookan art centered on the Lower Columbia River and was created by Chinookan-speaking people living along the river and its tributaries. The style is unique, focusing on geometric forms, numerical patterns, and anatomical representation. It is embedded in Chinookan mythology and differs considerably from the more widely recognized Formline of Indigenous artists from the northern Pacific Northwest. It also receives less attention, both publicly and scholarly. Due to high rates of death along the Columbia from introduced diseases during colonial invasion, and high levels of looting that followed, Chinookan art nearly disappeared from the landscape. In the 21st century Chinookan art has had a resurgence, led by Chinookan practitioners. The resurgence occurs not only within individual households but also in public settings. This resurgence also includes an emphasis on teaching the style to youth, who learn that this is not just about making art but is integrally attached to culture more broadly, including connection to language, stories, protocols, and Indigenous identity itself. It is ultimately a source of pride, resilience, and resistance. As a result, where there were once generations who never saw a landscape with Chinookan art, there are now generations who will never know a landscape without it. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Arts of the Northwest Coast)
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