Collection of carved figures previously serving as a Yuquot ritual site
Photograph of the Shrine by George Hunt c. 1904
The Yuquot Whalers' Shrine (known also as 'prayer house' or 'washing house'), previously located on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, was a site of purification rituals, passed down through the family of a Yuquot chief.[1] It contained a collection of 88 carved human figures, four carved whale figures, and sixteen human skulls. Since the early twentieth century, it has been in the possession of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, but is rarely displayed. Talks are underway regarding repatriation.
The Shrine was first described in first-hand accounts in 1785 by early Western explorers as a Nootka (Nuu-chah-nulth) ceremonial site;[2] the actual origin of the Shrine is unclear. Anthropologist Aldona Jonaitis believes a text of Camille de Roquefeuil written in 1818 provides the first conclusive evidence of the Shrine's existence from the perspective of multiple people.[3] Rituals performed at the Shrine are of some contention, with more recent texts from anthropologists Franz Boas and Philip Drucker describing the ritual as involving the use of skulls or corpses that do not appear in the earlier French texts of de Roquefeuil and his ship's surgeon Yves-Thomas Vimont.[2] What is known is that it was of considerable importance given the Nuu-chah-nulth's long history of whaling, going back at least 4000 years.[4]
Removal
It has been suggested that it was late in the winter canning season of 1900/early 1901 that George Hunt, a Tlingit-English ethnographer, learned of this 'mysterious' Shrine in the forest near Yuquot.[5] Hunt initiated communications with Franz Boas in 1903 about the existence of the Shrine, photographing it meticulously to gauge his interest; Boas was excited to purchase it on behalf of his employer, the American Museum of Natural History. Two elders claimed they had power to give permission to remove the Shrine and Hunt negotiated a price with both of them, with the condition was he was to wait until the band left for the hunt before removing the Shrine, as they feared a backlash. It was in 1904 that the Shrine was moved to the AMNH where is remains today, yet to be fully displayed.[6]
Franz Boas, George Hunt, and Salvage Anthropology
Photo of George Hunt taken by Edward Curtis c.1910. "Hamatsa Initiate in his Hut - Kwakiutl"
George Hunt, upon removal of the Shrine, wrote to Boas to tell him, "It was the best thing I ever bought from the Indians".[6] For Boas, the acquisition of the Whalers' Shrine became a defining 'historical moment', and marked a new direction in his 'new found obsession' with regard to the museum, its collections, and displays.
Anthropologist Harry Whitehead has been especially outspoken about the methods used by George Hunt and Franz Boas in acquiring artefacts (and specifically the Whalers' Shrine). He believes that they contributed significantly to the perpetuation of salvage anthropology through their frequent collection and cataloguing of First Nations or American Indian objects. Whitehead says that in an attempt to save artefacts of the Nuu-chah-nulth before they 'disappeared', they accelerated the destruction of their 'traditional culture'.[7] Furthermore, their public display and photographs of the artefacts collected prompted others to follow suit in collecting for their own institutions, which exacerbated the situation and led to years of misrepresentation of many groups of people and artefacts taken under false pretences.[7]
Aaron Glass, anthropologist of the Northwest Coast, has said that Hunt and Boas directly influenced photographers and anthropologists looking to capture Nuu-chah-nulth culture before it 'disappeared', continuing the practice of salvage ethnography and anthropology. He writes that photographer Edward Curtis (spurred on by Hunt's photographs to make his own of the Nuu-chah-nulth) was interventionist in his work and added things for visual effect and interest, encouraging the romanticizing of a 'lost culture' typical of salvage ethnography.[8] George Hunt himself, under disguise, posed as a member of the Nuu-chah-nulth to demonstrate his interpretation of certain ceremonies in 1910 for Curtis' camera.[8] The photograph is not of George Hunt falsely acting out a Nuu-chah-nulth initiation at all, George is acting out a Kwakiutl ceremony on the East coast of Vancouver Island which he was familiar with.
The repatriation of the Shrine and its contents are mired by extenuating and complicating circumstances. Canada does not presently have legislation in governing repatriation; however, museums act as caretakers on a case-by-case basis. In the United States, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) requires Native American cultural items to be returned to 'lineal descendents'. The current discourse of the Shrine is to build a community centre that would house the Shrine, or build a replica of the Shrine. Jonaitas explains, however, that there needs to be a more 'nuanced' view and understanding of how historical events occurring, both before and after the acquisition, has presented challenges as to how to repatriate in light of loss of ceremonial rituals and traditions surrounding the handling of such sacred items.[3] The repatriation of the Whalers' Shrine was the subject of a 1994 documentary entitled 'Washing of Tears' by filmmaker and anthropologist, Hugh Brody.
1 2 Jonaitis, Aldona (2000). The Mowachaht Whalers' Shrine: History Revealed by Carvings. Royal British Columbia Museum.
↑ Macmillan; Monks, St Claire (2001). "Nuu-chah-nulth Whaling: Archaeological Insights into Antiquity Species Preferences, and Cultural Importance". Arctic Anthropology. 38 (1): 60–81.
↑ Coombs, Jeremy (2002). MA Thesis: Franz Boas and George Hunt: Uncovering the Relationship between Anthropologist and his Collector. Toronto, Ontario: Department of Social Anthropology, York University.
1 2 Ruttan, Stephen. "Yuquot Whalers' Shrine". Tales From the Vault. Victoria Public Library. Retrieved 2 March 2013.
1 2 Whitehead, Harry (2010). "The Agency of Yearning on the Northwest Coast: Franz Boas, George Hunt and the salvage autochonous culture". Memory Studies. 3 (3): 215–223. doi:10.1177/1750698010364813. S2CID145319451.
1 2 Glass, Aaron (2009). "A Cannibal in the Archive: Performance, Materiality, and (In)Visibility in Unpublished Edward Curtis Photographs of the Kwakwaka'wakw Hamat'sa". Visual Anthropology Review. 25 (2): 128–149. doi:10.1111/j.1548-7458.2009.01038.x.
Franz Uri Boas was a German-American anthropologist and a pioneer of modern anthropology who has been called the "Father of American Anthropology". His work is associated with the movements known as historical particularism and cultural relativism.
Totem poles are monumental carvings found in western Canada and the northwestern United States. They are a type of Northwest Coast art, consisting of poles, posts or pillars, carved with symbols or figures. They are usually made from large trees, mostly western red cedar, by First Nations and Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast including northern Northwest Coast Haida, Tlingit, and Tsimshian communities in Southeast Alaska and British Columbia, Kwakwaka'wakw and Nuu-chah-nulth communities in southern British Columbia, and the Coast Salish communities in Washington and British Columbia.
A potlatch is a gift-giving feast practiced by Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of Canada and the United States, among whom it is traditionally the primary governmental institution, legislative body, and economic system. This includes the Heiltsuk, Haida, Nuxalk, Tlingit, Makah, Tsimshian, Nuu-chah-nulth, Kwakwaka'wakw, and Coast Salish cultures. Potlatches are also a common feature of the peoples of the Interior and of the Subarctic adjoining the Northwest Coast, although mostly without the elaborate ritual and gift-giving economy of the coastal peoples.
The Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw, also known as the Kwakiutl, are one of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast. Their current population, according to a 2016 census, is 3,665. Most live in their traditional territory on northern Vancouver Island, nearby smaller islands including the Discovery Islands, and the adjacent British Columbia mainland. Some also live outside their homelands in urban areas such as Victoria and Vancouver. They are politically organized into 13 band governments.
The Nuu-chah-nulth, also formerly referred to as the Nootka, Nutka, Aht, Nuuchahnulth or Tahkaht, are one of the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast in Canada. The term Nuu-chah-nulth is used to describe fifteen related tribes whose traditional home is on the west coast of Vancouver Island.
Salvage ethnography is the recording of the practices and folklore of cultures threatened with extinction, including as a result of modernization. It is generally associated with the American anthropologist Franz Boas; he and his students aimed to record vanishing Native American cultures. Since the 1960s, anthropologists have used the term as part of a critique of 19th-century ethnography and early modern anthropology.
Maquinna was the chief of the Nuu-chah-nulth people of Nootka Sound, during the heyday of the maritime fur trade in the 1780s and 1790s on the Pacific Northwest Coast. The name means "possessor of pebbles". His people are today known as the Mowachaht and reside today with their kin, the Muchalaht, at Gold River, British Columbia, Canada.
Tseshaht First Nation is an amalgamation of many tribes up and down Alberni Inlet and in the Alberni Valley of central Vancouver Island in the Canadian province of British Columbia. They are a member of the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council which includes all other Nuu-chah-nulth-aht peoples except the Pacheedaht First Nation.
Northwest Coast art is the term commonly applied to a style of art created primarily by artists from Tlingit, Haida, Heiltsuk, Nuxalk, Tsimshian, Kwakwaka'wakw, Nuu-chah-nulth and other First Nations and Native American tribes of the Northwest Coast of North America, from pre-European-contact times up to the present.
Dzunuḵ̓wa, also Tsonoqua, Tsonokwa, Basket Ogress, is a figure in Kwakwakaʼwakw mythology and Nuu-chah-nulth mythology.
Michael Eugene Harkin is one of the leading anthropologists in the United States specializing in the ethnohistory of indigenous people of the western U.S. and Canada. He is currently professor and former chair of anthropology at the University of Wyoming, having previously taught at Emory University and Montana State University. In 2011 he was Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Cultural Studies at the Karl-Franzens University in Graz, Austria, and in 2007 he was a visiting professor at Shanghai University.
George Hunt (Tlingit) was a Canadian and a consultant to the American anthropologist Franz Boas; through his contributions, he is considered a linguist and ethnologist in his own right. He was Tlingit-English by birth and learned both those languages. Growing up with his parents at Fort Rupert, British Columbia in Kwakwaka'wakw territory, he learned their language and culture as well. Through marriage and adoption he became an expert on the traditions of the Kwakwaka'wakw of coastal British Columbia.
Aldona Jonaitis is the director of the University of Alaska Museum of the North, a professor of anthropology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and an author who has published widely on Native American art.
The following is an alphabetical list of topics related to Indigenous peoples in Canada, comprising the First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples.
Museum anthropology is a domain of scholarship and professional practice in the discipline of anthropology.
Santa Cruz de Nuca was a Spanish colonial fort and settlement and the first European colony in what is now known as British Columbia. The settlement was founded on Vancouver Island in 1789 and abandoned in 1795, with its far northerly position making it the "high-water mark" of verified northerly Spanish settlement along the North American west coast. The colony was established with the Spanish aim of securing the entire west coast of the continent from Alaska southwards, for the Spanish crown.
Martha Black is a Canadian art historian who specializes in Northwest Coast art and issues in museum management and repatriation. Black is the author or a number of articles and a book on Heiltsuk and Nuu Chah Nuulth art, and issues related to repatriation outside of the treaty process. She is a curator at the Royal British Columbia Museum.
A drift whale is a cetacean mammal that has died at sea and floated into shore. This is in contrast to a beached or stranded whale, which reaches land alive and may die there or regain safety in the ocean. Most cetaceans that die, from natural causes or predators, do not wind up on land; most die far offshore and sink deep to become novel ecological zones known as whale falls. Some species that wash ashore are scientifically dolphins, i.e. members of the family Delphinidae, but for ease of use, this article treats them all as "drift whales". For example, one species notorious for mass strandings is the pilot whale, also known as "blackfish", which is taxonomically a dolphin.
Whaling on the Pacific Northwest Coast encompasses both aboriginal and commercial whaling from Washington State through British Columbia to Alaska. The indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast have whaling traditions dating back millennia, and the hunting of cetaceans continues by Alaska Natives and to a lesser extent by the Makah people.
Whaling in Canada encompasses both aboriginal and commercial whaling, and has existed on all three Canadian oceans, Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic. The indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast have whaling traditions dating back millennia, and the hunting of cetaceans continues by Inuit. By the late 20th century, watching whales was a more profitable enterprise than hunting them.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
