Just after coming back from our last London excursion we read in the paper about a new exhibition at the British Museum. Where the Thunderbird Lives is a study of cultural resilience in the face of many challenges. It was a fantastic exhibition with an amazing variety of both ancient and modern pieces. I particularly liked the miniature Copper, by Alison Bremner, a Tlingit artist,. You can see more of her work here.
The exhibition gave us a chance to talk about the less palatable truths of white settlers attitudes to native people, we talked about residential schools, missions and forced conversion to Christianity, about the way that stereotypes have been/are used to make native people appear either savage and warlike or childlike and backwards while ignoring the rich artistic and cultural heritage that belong to them. Our novel for this topic The Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich has started to touch on the impact of colonisation and our morning reading was quite dark today as the family and their community endured a smallpox outbreak.
We touched on the importance of Potlach ceremonies and how, when they were made illegal and people could be taken to prison for attending, the culture survived by going underground. During Potlach ceremonies gifts were given and dances performed. It was also a time when new titles and rights to certain fishing or foraging grounds were bestowed . In this video Duane Aucoin explains the importance of Potlach.
One of the most prestigious gifts or trade items were Coppers. The modern interpretation above draws from an ancient tradition of metalwork.
Coppers could be treated like money, each one was extremely precious and they often had names and their individual histories could be traced. We watched a short film on the process of creating a copper which was absolutely fascinating. The quote below is from one of the men in the video.
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