from those woven between the late 19th cen- tury to early 20th century. Therefore, the re- searchers concluded, in those textiles created during the mid-19th century or earlier, dog hair was probably used to boost the thickness and strength of the blankets’ goat hair. While Heald says she was “really hopeful” that the NMAI blankets contained dog hair, given these were dating into the 20th century when commercial blankets were coming into the market, she wasn’t surprised to find some contained sheep wool. “Traders and others coming into the territory disrupted a lot of traditional living and access to resources,” she says.
REVIVING A DYING ART
George says that whether during a wedding, the naming of a child or a memorial, weaving is “the foundation of our ceremonies.” At the beginning of a ceremony, blankets are often put down for the person to stand on as “a pure space for someone to go into a new part of their life,” she says. Yet even though weaving is so central to
Salish culture, just a few decades ago, the traditional art was in danger of going the way of the woolly dog. George says gener- ations of her people, including her grand- mother and mother, went to Canada resi- dential schools where they weren’t allowed to learn or teach traditions such as weaving. “That is a long time to have a gap in your culture,” she says. But thanks to the efforts of a group of
Coast Salish weavers, the art is once again thriving. Susan Pavel, president and found- er of the Coast Salish Wool Weaving Center in Skokomish, Washington, has been teach- ing traditional Salish weaving classes for the past two decades. She first learned from her
Susan Pavel has taught traditional Salish weaving for the past two decades. She and her students have passed on the skills to about 3,000 people.
husband’s uncle, Skokomish master weaver Bruce Miller, when only a handful of people in his community were known to be still prac- ticing traditional weaving. Since Pavel started teaching in 2004, more than 3,000 people have learned how to weave Salish textiles. Pavel was among a group of weavers to
make the first mountain goat and sheep wool twinned blanket in the community in gener- ations. They took 12 years gathering enough wild mountain goat hair and another two years to weave the blanket. The weavers re- vealed it in a 2006 ceremony. “It was a monu- mental event,” says Pavel. George, who learned from Pavel and Miller, now serves as a board member and teacher for the Coast Salish Wool Weaving Center. She was among those chosen to weave robes for the Squamish, one of the four First Nations who hosted the open- ing ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancou- ver. The weavers worked from 2004 to 2010 to make enough robes for the Squamish who
While a small bag such as this might be completed in a few days, a blanket will take hundreds of hours to complete.
participated in the event. “Much work and love went into that regalia,” she says. “We were so proud.” George and other students of Pavel and
Miller have taught for the Squamish Nation Education Department, which has since de- veloped weaving curricula. They have also taught at colleges, high schools and elemen- tary schools. She says before the weavers started teaching, she would see Squamish people having to use Pendleton blankets in ceremonies as they didn’t have any from her culture. “Now our blankets are in our cere- monies,” she says. One of the most meaningful uses of the
traditional robes was to wrap remains of an- cestors who were repatriated from the Cana- dian Museum of History in Quebec in 2006. “It showed our people what the weaving is for,” says George. So while the woolly dog is no longer with
the Coast Salish people, its legacy lives on. It is a reminder of an art being brought back into the contemporary Coast Salish culture, engendering pride and furthering the Salish’s cultural identity. “Nothing is ever gone,” George says. “The
weaving techniques were sleeping in our community and we were privileged to wake them up.” X
Patricia Jollie (Bitterroot Salish) is a museum technician at the National Museum of the American Indian.
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 39
PHOTO COURTESY OF SUSAN PAVEL
PHOTO COURTESY OF SUSAN PAVEL
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