[LARGE PLATFORM WITH LOOM]
dxʷsq́ius Jerry Jones, Tulalip
Loom
Wood, paint
1990s
On loan from Teeweewas Tillie Jones
[WEAVING GALLERY ENTRY AUDIO TRANSCRIPT]
[Chief Dr. Janice George]
“The weaver’s spirit to me is the generosity of the ancestors. Something that was left to us. Something that we're, gathering back, gathering back, gathering back.
All of this spirit, all the feelings that the weavers had to share with the community. “
[Gail White Eagle]
“Our ancestors started this way back in the beginning of time. So they've been doing this since, you know, grandmother Cedar tree totem since spider totem, you know. Really since the time of do poi both. It's been here. It's been a part of this land. It's been a part of, our DNA forever.”
[Chief Dr. Janice George]
“I just love sharing the tenacity and resilience and strength that those ancestors who came through that keyhole carrying our gifts of weaving, carving, canoe building, medicine making- all of it. How grateful and how much I admire that.”
[Willard "Buddy' Joseph]
“You know, back in the day to produce a blanket, it meant the whole community was working together.”
[Kelly Sullivan]
“The pride that a piece, a finished piece brings to the group of people that contributed. All of our spirits are connected in that, all of that, every step of the way. The weaving has a spirit energy in every piece. Those alder cones, those mushrooms, the fiber that we gathered that's what gives the weaving so much power.
And it definitely helps us all feel unified. It helps us feel loved.”
[Tillie Jones]
“It Keeps us all together, right? We all need each other.”
[Willard "Buddy" Joseph]
“When my mom told me years ago when I was a child that it had monetary value, I couldn't get it. But now that I know the history, the history of it, and just to think that our people gave away hundreds of these pieces, you know, to to try and weave something is just puts more context to understanding the why was so valuable to us in more ways than one.
You know, this is something somebody had to sit down and figure out how to do these things, somebody had to sit there and look at mountain goat wool and, and, you know, it's like, darn, I could spin this, you know, I could make some clothing out of this. Like, that's what I marveled at.This was something that's been here for thousands of years.”
[Gail White Eagle]
“It's our connection, our connection to our ancestors. We're recognizing and honoring the fact that, you know, they spent all that time and all that energy, gathering, weaving, spinning, dyeing to make their garments. And we're working hard and we're working diligently to, learn from those garments, to bring them back so that our people can be proud. And feel honorable again to to wear them, to to give them away, to have ceremony in them.
Yes, we are trying to heal ourselves. They're weaving, trying to pick our people up and help stand them up through this weaving process.”
[Tillie Jones]
“People that were our teachers and now they're our ancestors. And that'll be us someday.”
[Chief Dr. Janice George]
“And I want to pass that feeling on. I want people to understand that their ancestors work to have them here, no matter who it is, no matter who it is. I know how fortunate I am to have this and what our ancestors worked for. How lucky and how, privileged I feel to, you know, feel that love from them. Know that they were looking out for me. But everybody can have that.”
[Gail White Eagle]
“It's just the connection and the energy of it all. The spiritual energy, the love.”
[Tillie Jones]
“We know now that it will continue. There's not a doubt in my mind that our Coast Salish, way of life will continue.”
[CORNER CASEWORK]
(Image Caption) A member of the Coast Salish Wool Weaving Center Board learns from the Skokomish Grandmother Tunic during a research visit to the Field Museum in 2018.
The Grandmother Tunic has given birth to many, many children.
Weaver, Skokomish
kayə sdəxʷpət (Skokomish Language)
"Grandmother tunic"
Mountain goat wool
Pre-1893
Lent by The Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, 19777
“What you are creating is something the Ancestors want you to make. The Ancestors are working through your hands.
They give the weaver this ancient knowledge.”
— Chepximiya Siyam Chief Janice George, Squamish
[GRANDMOTHER TUNIC AUDIO TRANSCRIPT]
“But there's one weaving that stood out that kept making me go look back at her. And that was the tunic, who we now call Grandmother Tunic.
Quite honestly, the weaving itself, it's not much to look at. There's no color, and it's not particularly white. It's like a little bit dirty on the dirty side. Nothing's going to catch your eye about it.
However, it just kept talking to me. It just kept talking to me. So I would wake up in the morning and I'd be thinking about this tunic, vest. We didn't even know what to call it back then. And I would go to sleep thinking about this too. And then I'd wake up in the middle of the night thinking about this tunic.
And finally, I don't know about two weeks of this constantly happening to me. I went to uncle and I'm like, uncle, why does this weaving just, like, keep tapping me on the shoulder and keep whispering in my ear, I don't what's going on here.
And uncle says do you really not know what's going on?
It's vibrating. It's it needs more than living in the drawer in the basement of the field. Something is beckoning, hungry and almost desperate to live outside that box. To bring her teachings back into the world.
And for those of us who can hear that message, we are the beholden. We are commanded to allow that to work through us. And at this point in my life, I recognize that I have trained myself. Been obedient to in the most beautiful, precious way, obedience to the teachings of SQ3Tsya’yay, which means weaver spirit, power.
I don't take that charge lightly. I do all the things I'm supposed to do and then some to keep that pure and to keep it honest and to keep it thriving through. I don't squelch it. I don't dismiss it, I honor it, and I lift up the things that I can hear and see and smell and taste and feel and all the ways that the spirit wants to talk to this human called sa’hLa mitSa.
So that's what was happening with Grandmother Tunic. She wanted to be alive. She wanted her teachings to be out there and viable for all of us.
So the most remarkable thing about that is that the opening for the neck was not something that, at least in our territory, nobody was teaching this particular weaving in this particular way with the neck opening woven in place, meaning you didn't cut the warp to produce the opening. You wove it in such a way that the opening was created while you wove it. And so we figured out a way to weave her with the neck opening, and then we could not teach it fast enough. People were constantly asking, how do we weave this particular tunic?
So we taught and we taught and we taught and we taught and we taught and we taught. And, I remember distinctly at one point there was, a young—could have been maybe ten years old-ish girl who had come to me and said, I learned from so-and-so, and that person learned from so-and-so, and you taught that person.
So it's like I had a great grandchild who was learning to weave as a result of Grandmother Tunic coming out and wanting to be heard and spoken and see the light of day.”
— Dr. Susan Pavel
“There is a calmness that comes over the community when the weavers are working.
It’s an energy.
It’s an energy just like all art is an energy.
At that time it was just really exciting. It was a huge energy in the community. Everybody was feeling it. Something from the ancestors was coming back, it was asleep for a while, and now it’s here again.”
— Chepximiya Siyam Chief Dr. Janice George, Squamish
[SET OF CASES WITH GREEN PAINT BACKGROUND]
sa’hLa mitSa Dr. Susan Pavel, Filipina
"I remember whenever we went to the Field Museum last trip, post-COVID. That was the first time I had seen the one [standing mat] at the Field. I’m assuming I saw it before but it didn’t...reveal itself to me.
Things unfold, they present themselves. It has a life of its own. There something that is talking that I need to be obedient to? That one definitely landed as ‘Yes’.
Recreate this one.
So, what’s sitting there is obedience. Obedience, defined from a pure place. Obedience in today’s modern world, that word doesn’t have great connotations. I mean obedience like I just heard that birdsong, I heard the bird singing right now. I am obedient to that.
I can feel the wind blowing. I am obedient to that. I could hear the weaving asking to be recreated. I’m obedient to that.
So, as I think about future generations or I think about our children’s children or I think about my son’s children.
I think about anyone that comes after us–that they can nurture that thing that’s talking, the thing that they can hear, the thing that they can feel.
Don’t brush that away.”
“Margaret Greene of Samish Nation said no one had woven something like this in over 150 years, not from mountain goat wool, not fully twined.
Her name is du’kWXaXa’t3w3l which means sacred change for each other. She is a fully twined mountain goat wool weaving that took twelve years to gather enough wool and another two years for me to process it, dye it, spin it, and then weave it.
We had a ceremony to unveil it in 2006, that included more than seven local tribes.
This piece has a lot to say still. It vibrates and talks and teaches us and has laid groundwork for all sorts of things that happened as a result of her being unveiled and coming to life.”
Case Left
sa’hLa mitSa Dr. Susan Pavel, Filipina
Renewal
Mountain goat wool blend
2025
On loan from sa’hLa mitSa Dr. Susan Pavel
Above on Form
sa’hLa mitSa Dr. Susan Pavel, Filipina
du’kWXaXa’t3w3l
Sacred Change for Each Other
Mountain goat wool
2007
Gift of Gayle and Charles Pancerzewski, in honor of the 75th Anniversary of the Seattle Art Museum
Michael Pavel, Skokomish
Blanket Pin
Deer bone
Gift of Gayle and Charles Pancerzewski, in honor of the 75th Anniversary of the Seattle Art Museum
Weaver, Cowichan
slhewun (Cowichan Language)
“Mat, or anything someone is placed on”
Wool
Pre-1892
Lent by The Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, 17795
“The first thing you see in a ceremony from the beginning of time, is that a blanket gets laid down on the floor.
A person gets their name, they get puberty rights, a chieftainship, memorialization of a loved one, or get married in these ceremonies that happen, public ceremonies.
So a new blanket laid on the floor creates that space that's pure for you to start this new time in your life— this phase in your life, the new level of life.
To me, that's probably the most ceremonial thing that you could make. You cannot say that weavings aren't a sacred object. They've always been a sacred object. They are the sacred objects.”
— Chepximiya Siyam Chief Dr. Janice George, Squamish
[LOW PLATFORM BENEATH LOOM ON WALL]
Carver, Cowichan
‘uy-umun (Cowichan Language)
“Loom”
Wood
Pre-1950
1-908
WHAT IS A LOOM?
Salish weavings are made by the interlacing of warp and weft threads.
The vertical warp is one continual thread, wrapped over the top and bottom bars of the loom many times, all set in place at the beginning, when the loom is “warped up” by the weaver.
The horizontal weft is the active element when weaving, moving in and out behind or in front of the warp to create a pattern. The weft can change color as needed for the design.
“Most of the time when I work with wood, I’ll use all my power tools. But the thing that I found, was trying to cut these on the band saw is almost impossible, because the bandsaw blades are too wide. The scroll saw blade is too squirrelly. It’s the scale of the comb... I honestly didn’t think I could get 10 tines into two inches of space.
It was a true learning experience. What I figured out while I was carving this last time, I used all hand tools. I didn’t use no power tools, saw or anything. I started with a big block that I knew was dry. I used the hand tools through the whole process, just like our ancestors.
It really it made me understand how our ancestors did it. It was genius how they came up with making these—it just blows me away. And it all can be done by hand...and it’s actually easier to do by hand.”
— Weńanūá Al Charles Jr.
Gift of the American Antiquarian Society, 1895.
Courtesy of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, 95-2010/48393
1. Weńanūá Al Charles Jr.,
Lower Elwha Klallam / Lummi
Woolly Dog and Serpent Comb
Maple
2025
Weńanūá Al Charles Jr., (right) based this comb on the Coast Salish Loom Comb (pictured left) from 1818, which also inspired a print by Susan Point, Musqueam.
2. Carver, Snoqualmie
ṕəɫusəd (Lushootseed)
“Comb”
Wood
1800s
On loan from Snoqualmie Indian Tribe
3. Carver, Cowichan
p’utth’tun (Cowichan Language)
“Needle, for nets”
Wood
Pre-1930
1-10632
Loom combs are used to tap the weft (horizontal yarn) into place, ensuring an even weave.
Please touch
Loom Comb
Dusty Humphries, Jamestown S’Klallam
[THREE CASES ON GALLERY LEFT WALL]
Qw3’May Usia Tahnee Hawk Miller, Skokomish
“What inspired me to create this hood is an older picture of my great, great, great grandfather Frank Allen and his wife, Lucy Allen.
There is something about the hood in the photo that spoke to me. I just felt drawn to it, connected to it, it just kind of reminds me of them. I think that is why it is so special to me.
I had to be mentally and physically ready to do it. I prayed a lot. I was really nervous. Where to start? How do I want to do this? I did a rough draft with some thick and quick yarn, to see if there were any kinks I needed to work out before I worked with the mountain goat wool.
You don’t see those hoods regularly. You just don’t.
I have never seen anyone create one, until now. So I think that is another reason I wanted to challenge myself to create this special piece.”
Qw3’May Usia Tahnee Hawk Miller, Skokomish
puĺ qʷəd (Skokomish Language)
“Hood / hat”
Mountain goat wool blend
2025
On loan from Qw3 ’may Usia Tahnee Hawk Miller
Weaver, Skokomish
puĺ qʷəd (Skokomish Language)
"Hat / hood"
Mountain goat wool
Pre-1892
160, Gift of Washington World's Fair Commission
Chepximiya Siyam Chief Dr. Janice George, Sḵwxwú7mesh
“The hood is a powerful thing.
The inspiration came from the mountain goat wool. It was just so powerful. I just wanted to let it lead me to things that I saw that really affected me—like the Skokomish hood.
It wasn’t made out of the same material but our Squamish historian talked about how there was a hood that covered the whole head of the sxw7úmten, or medicine people, who would put on this hood when they started their work. They started off with this hood that was woven for that special powerful spiritual reason.
Hoods have always had that connotation for me. When I saw the Skokomish hood, I just felt that it was really powerful and that it would bring something special to whoever wore it.
So I really wanted to make one. Especially having the mountain goat wool, it has such an energy and just goes right through your hands. You can feel it while you are working on it.
The aesthetic of the hood is a nod to the Skokomish because that is where Buddy and I first learned weaving from Susan and Bruce. It’s the old style, but we are making it ours today and using it for what we know is going to bring us medicine.
It has a magic component to it. The power of it, the esteem in it is held—I really wanted to make sure that it comes across. It’s got it’s own vibration and life in it still.
To be a weaver is not to be taken lightly. What you are doing is weaving armor for our people. It is energetic and spiritual protection for our people.”
Chepximiya Siyam Chief Dr. Janice George, Sḵwxwú7mesh
Ancestral Ceremony (hood)
Shell, mountain goat wool (xwuxwséĺḵen)
2025
[BLACK AND WHITE MURAL OF CHIEFLY DELEGATION]
“I grew up looking at this photograph. It was everywhere. There is so much pride in knowing our ancestor was a highly regarded speaker, how brilliant and powerful they all were.
The nobility of it, it just gets me every time looking at that photograph, knowing how much love they had for their people.”
— Chepximiya Siyam Chief Dr. Janice George, Squamish
Mural
Chiefly delegation at North Vancouver ferry dock, May 1908
Photograph courtesy of Vancouver City Archives
Members of this delegation of Salish chiefs led by S7ápeleḵ Chief Joe Capilano (robe in arm) traveled to England and Ottawa in the early 1900s.
They advocated for land claims, fishing and hunting rights, and the repeal of legislation which outlawed the legal, economic, and ceremonial practices of First Nations in British Columbia.
Their hand-woven mountain goat wool robes signal their leadership roles and the protections that these garments bring in moments of public declaration.
[TRIANGLE PLATFORM]
teeweewas Tillie Jones, Tulalip
x̌ʷaqʷabacəd (Lushootseed)
“Ceremonial Belt”
Mountain goat wool, red ochre paint
2025
On loan from teeweewas Tillie Jones
Skwetsimeltxw Willard “Buddy” Joseph, Squamish
Chiefly Tunic
Mountain goat wool, sheep wool
2025
On loan from Skwetsimeltxw Willard “Buddy” Joseph
Skwetsimeltxw Willard “Buddy” Joseph, Squamish
“Janice was my muse. I wanted to try out something that I haven’t done before. With that length, it’s still protecting the wearer and like with every weaving we do, spiritual protection is woven into the fibers.”
“Red is really important to our Salish people. In our culture red ochre represents protection. You put it on your face and behind your neck, you know, different parts of your body for protection. So that’s what attracted me to the color.
It took time. I was a little surprised. But it was so special to work with the mountain goat wool.
Mountain goat is held in the highest regard in our communities, for what it provides us and the spiritual aspects of it. It has a different feel.
When I was weaving it, I was thinking of the speakers in our ceremony. I thought the designs would draw attention to their face and their head. To do any cultural work, there is a weight to it. There’s ways of being as a speaker. There’s ways of being as a chief or as a community member. There is a lot to it.”
Skwetsimeltxw Willard “Buddy” Joseph, Squamish
Chiefly Tunic
Mountain goat and sheep’s wool
2025
On loan from Skwetsimeltxw Willard “Buddy” Joseph
