Manifesting Rights on Cloth: Regalia and Relations on the Northwest Coast

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 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.