Whaler’s hat
Made by Ellen Curley, Tla-o-qui-aht, 1910
Commissioned by C. F. Newcombe
Made from dyed and bleached bear-grass, eel-grass, and cedar bark, this hat is modelled after eighteenth-century hats that depict a whale hunt. The designs encircling the brim represent the mountains that delineate Nuu-chah-nulth territories.
RBCM 9736





Serpent headdress
Most headdresses have intricate cut-out shapes at the top and back. The carver of this headdress is unknown, but his work appears in many museum collections, identified by stylistic details.
RBCM 13254





Bark shredders and bark beater
Tools like these are used to soften and separate the cedar bark fibres in preparation for weaving. The bottom tool is a bark beater and the other two are bark shredders. The top shredder was collected in 1884; the other tools are part of the C. F. Newcombe collection. All are made from whale bones.
RBCM 459, 9611, 10226





Model sealing canoe
At the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, two-man Nuu-chah-nulth crews, each with their own canoe, went to the Bering Sea every year on commercial sealing schooners. This model canoe with two figures and a seal probably depicts such as crew. The figure in the back of the canoe once held a paddle; the man in the front had a harpoon.
RBCM 16806 (Gift of V. E. Heath)





Sea-bird rattle
This elegantly carved rattle was collected by C. F. Newcombe at Barkley Sound in 1911. It appears to represent a sea bird, perhaps a merganser. With deft knife strokes, the carver has suggested feathers; he used brass tacks for the eyes.
RBCM 2132

 

Royal British Columbia Museum & Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council

Archaeological excavations at Yuquot on Nootka Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island present scientific evidence that the history of the Nuu-chah-nulth Nations goes back at least 5,000 to 7,000 years. Although Europeans first knew of the Nuu-chah-nulth in the late eighteenth century when Captain James Cook and others first visited Yuquot (Friendly Cove), Nuu-chah-nulth oral histories attest to the great historical depth of Nuu-chah-nulth culture and traditions.

The people of the west coast of Vancouver Island used to be called Nootka by Europeans. They call themselves the Nuu-chah-nulth, which can be translated as «along the mountains» and refers to their traditional territories. These territories—the sea and the creatures of the sea, the beaches and islands and the seafood on them, the rivers and all the fish that go up the rivers, the mountains, and the forests—and everything they hold that keeps Nuu-chah-nulth people alive belong to the hereditary chiefs. They look after all this for their people. The territorial rights of the chiefs are their hahuuli. Through many generations, the hahuuli have been recounted and reinforced in the oral traditions at feasts and other cultural gatherings. The chief’s storage box is his huupuKwanum. Metaphorically, it contains all his inherited rights: names, dances, masks, privileges. HuupuKwanum is a word in the northern Nuu-chah-nulth language. It means all the treasures that the chief has within his territories. In the southern Nuu-chah-nulth language spoken by the Ditidaht and Pacheedaht peoples, the word tupaat denotes ceremonial rights achieved by spiritual quest and owned by chiefs and commoners. (Nuu-chah-nulth words have been anglicized here; they are properly written in a special linguistic spelling.)

These concepts guided the organization and presentation of the first comprehensive exhibit of Nuu-chah-nulth art and culture. Out of the Mist: HuupuKwanum-Tupaat, Treasures of the Nuu-chah-nulth Chiefs opened at the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria in July 1999. The exhibit was developed, presented and circulated in partnership with the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal council and representatives from nineteen Nuu-chah-nulth nations. The Elders Committee of the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council established the protocols and processes that were followed to create the exhibit. Families, hereditary chiefs, and the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council were consulted for permission to exhibit the objects and also for appropriate interpretations.

The most important aspect of Nuu-chah-nulth art and culture on display are the Nuu-chah-nulth interpreters who worked in the exhibit in Victoria and are travelling with the exhibit to various other venues. The Nuu-chah-nulth interpreters bring their own personal, family and national stories to the exhibit. Their presence helps museum visitors to understand that Nuu-chah-nulth objects express the histories of specific families and communities and also that Nuu-chah-nulth culture is still vibrant. Today, Nuu-chah-nulth cultural traditions are regularly practised and the Nuu-chah-nulth people are asserting their rights to control hereditary lands and resources as well as their own social and political institutions.

A Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council / Royal British Columbia Museum Partnership

The images shown here are from Out of the Mist: HuupuKwanum-Tupaat, Treasures of the Nuu-chah-nulth Chiefs, the catalogue of the exhibit by Martha Black (1999). Photographs by Janet Dwyer, copyright by the Royal British Columbia Museum.

More information about the Nuu-chah-nulth can be found in the associated publication, Nuu-chah-nulth Voices, Histories, Objects and Journeys, edited by Alan L. Hoover (2000), and in the web site of the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council, www.nuuchahnulth.org.

Other venues of the exhibition are: The Denver Museum of Nature and Science (October 2000 to January 2001) and The Autry Museum of Western Heritage in Los Angeles (February to June 2001.