V. Removing the Museum: Employing Objects of the Past in the Present

In the past, Makah traveled everywhere by canoe. It was literally and symbolically at the center of their culture. The whaling canoe was made from a single cedar tree trunk, felled after the canoe maker prayed and thanked the tree for giving it’s life. Carving a canoe was a sacred practice, involving not only skill and time, but song and prayer. The trunk was hollowed using hand adzes and steamed to make it stretch. The carving tools created a rhythm by which songs of hunting or carving would be sung. (Neel, 1995: 5)

The Makah whaling canoe has a flat bottom and is 28-38 feet in length. The hull piece is the only attached piece and juts up at the front of the canoe. Anthropologist Eugene Arima writes that such pieces on Nuu-Chah-Nulth canoes represent a deer or wolf (Arima, 2000: 312). The wolf is a central character in Makah mythology and ritualism. Thus, on the Makah canoe, it most likely represents this creature. The Makah whaling canoe is painted black on the outside and red on the inside, possibly representing an older tradition of charring the outside.

Arima writes that marine animals "are canoes in which ride their real human-like spirit selves." Thus when a human Makah enters the canoe, s/he become like such animals, the humans only being the spiritual side of one whole being. Often potlatches were structured by canoe party who sometimes arrived together in their canoe. Arima suggests that some canoes were even kept inside and appreciated as "art," or at least as symbols of the culture.

Without the canoe, the Makah whale hunt would not have looked right and it would not have been carried out correctly. The canoe is always part of stories that tell about whaling, for it is not just the whale itself that is central to the culture, but the act of hunting the whale, which recreates traditional stories—both supernatural and historical. Simply by being in the canoe, searching for a whale, modern Makah can align themselves with their ancestors and become connected once again to their history and tradition.

But it was not just for the Makah community that the hunt had to look "right," that is, traditional. The canoe played a significant role in gaining the approval of the American public. Although there were some protestors, as discussed above, larger environmental groups stayed away. Because the hunt was represented as traditional, major animal rights protectors like Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund, and the Sierra Club did not oppose the killing of a whale by the Makah. The main image in keeping the hunt looking traditional, that is, "looking Indian," was the canoe.

The image of the Makah in their canoe, against the pristine background of Washington state, graced the pages of newspapers across the country. This image is that of the noble savage. Here, the Makah are removed from modern society and placed timelessly at sea.

That this became the primary symbol of the hunt, shows a sympathy by the media with the Makah. Here the icon of the noble savage was used by the Makah and picked up by the media. In the Makah Cultural and Research Center, the Makah employ this same image, with a similar agenda. In the MCRC, the canoe sits idly in front of a photograph of Makah paddling on the open ocean. In the hunt, all the Makah did was take this same image and place it in the modern world. The exhibit is about historical Makah; the hunt about modern people. The fact that the hunt reflects the themes in the exhibit is a sign of a successful hunt for both Makah and outsiders. Not only did they look like their ancestors, they were performing acts their ancestors had performed. These images make outsiders forget about the brutality of killing a whale and feel joy in the cultural revival of the Makah, icons of the noble savage, or ecological Indian, in the modern day. The presence of the canoe reconciles the savage agenda of the hunt.

In fact, the Makah did not have to use the canoe to hunt the whale at all. Because of Humane Society regulations, the shot that actually killed the whale, after initial harpooning from the canoe, was from a rifle on a motor boat, one of two accompanying the canoe on the hunt. Thus, the canoe was more a symbol than the necessary vehicle for killing the whale. The canoe reinforces that this whale hunt was not just about the whale; it was about cultural pride and heritage.

For people outside of Northwest Coast native culture, a Makah style canoe is a museum object, a work of art, and perhaps, for many, a thing of the past. To take that object and put it into use is a powerful message to the mainstream in and of itself about native presence and living cultures which many Americans may see as extinct. Even the protestors admit to the power of the image of the Makah canoe: "From the media point of view, this isn’t very good," claimed Sea Shepherd’s Paul Watson. "[We]’ve got a big black boat and they’re going to come out in a canoe" (Sullivan 174).

Media representations of Northwest Coast culture have been around for hundreds of years. American familiarity with the native people and objects of this region have come from movies, comics, explorers’ accounts, world’s fairs, and museum exhibits—mediums which, until recently, have allowed little native control or input. In New York City, mannequins dressed in traditional Haida clothing stand in a full size canoe, at one of the American Museum of Natural History’s entrances. In Seattle’s Burke Museum, Northwest Coast objects sit in a case entitled "Treasures," alongside objects from around the world, as well as with geological wonders. Seattle itself is a treasure trove of displaced native objects. From the totem poles in Pioneer Square to the Disney-esque façade of Ye Ol’ Curiosity Shop, native Northwest Coast culture is displayed, but not explained.

From Seattle, one can travel to Tillicum Village, a tourist enterprise involving a boat ride to an island where natives perform and serve dinner. Thus, in urban centers, even on the Northwest Coast, non-natives are confined to seeing native culture as display and performance, not the as the "real thing." Thus they may feel that native culture is a thing of the past.

The way Americans represent their own past is a matter of display. Objects are put in museums as evidence of historical events. By displaying these physical remains, Americans hope to define the truth about themselves and create a collective identity that can be shared by all.

In The Past is a Foreign Country, historian David Lowenthal argues that European-derived cultures are obsessed with the idea of preservation. "We admire its relics," he writes of history, "but they do not inspire our own acts and works"(Lowenthal, xxiv:1985). Thus have Northwest Coast canoes made their way into American museums and are part of how America defines its past, but they are to be preserved, not recycled. For the Makah to succeed in making the canoe a symbol of the present day, they had to take it not only out of the museum, but out of association with a nonrenewable past.

The Makah wanted more from the past than a museum object. Their relationship with the things of the past is less about the things themselves than it is about traditional lifeways and a distinctly native lifestyle. Lowenthal writes of Euro-American culture, "Many seem less concerned to find a past than to yearn for it, eager not so much to relive a fancied long-ago as to collect its relics and celebrate its virtues" (Lowenthal, 1985:7). The intention of the Makah was not simple yearning, but actual recreation. The whale hunt was not meant to be a symbol or revival of the past, but a recreation of past activities in the present day. It was not "celebrating" or "collecting," but doing.

The Makah knew the power that could come across only by invoking images of the past. This can be heard in tribe member Keith Johnson’s words: "I challenge you to go into that museum and look at those paddles. What do those paddles tell you?" The fact that the paddles are in a museum defines these objects as art and heritage. Yet a paddle, by nature, is an object meant to be used. The paddles, and the canoe as well, symbolize the Makah’s intent to create cultural revival by taking museum objects out of the museum. Thus they subverted Lowenthal’s Euro-American preservation values and forced the idea of a different relationship with the past upon the American mindset.

The canoe is a symbol of cultural revival up and down the Northwest Coast. It is an object natives feel close to, one that symbolizes tribal individuality, while bringing the geographically distant tribes closer together. In the past decade or so, many "paddle events" have taken place on the Northwest Coast. In these native paddles, tribes travel in traditional canoes to visit other tribes, reminiscent of how their ancestors visited one another. Some tribes now have races in these vessels and some perform long distance paddles as affirmations of their culture, and unity with neighboring tribes. (Neel, 1995: 1-12)

Even before the Makah whale hunt, the canoe was used as a device for cultural revival and a symbol of Northwest Coast unity. It was an individual Haida who, in the 1980s revived traditional canoe carving, making it possible for the Makah to learn the technique. Artist Bill Reid studied canoes in museums to learn the techniques that spurred the renewed interest in carving. In 1989 Reid and his crew paddled one of his hand carved canoes up the coast as a symbolic protest of the Canadian border that ran through Haida land. (Neel, 1995: 1-12)

Three years earlier, the Heiltsuk people canoed to the Vancouver World’s Fair. By the end of the 1980s, a number of Northwest Coast tribes organized the "Paddle to Seattle" and began carving and using traditional canoes in preparation. This paddle included peoples from Hoh and La Push who paddled down the Strait of Juan de Fuca and were greeted by members of the Suquamish, Tulalip, Lummi, and Heiltsuk along the way. Once the tribes met, they signed a document using Chief Seattle’s words, telling the citizens of Washington State that native people are present and powerful. "We lived and died here for hundreds of generations," read the paper, "and we offer our assistance in your coming to balance as an adult" (Neel, 1995: 3). By offering to symbolically raise Washington State into adulthood, the native people assert that they are the first people, but do so in a paternal, rather than a confrontational, manner. The paddles are successful because they are not violent assertions of native rights, but quiet displays of unity and strength. (Neel, 1995: 1-12) After the "Paddle to Seattle," a number of tribes organized the Qatuwas Festival. In 1993, some two thousand natives went to Bella Bella to participate. "Native people are regaining their strength and culture," announced Edwin Newman, "and this gathering is a sign that things are changing for our people" (Neel, 1995: 3).

In his introduction to The Great Canoes, Kwagiutl photographer David Neel writes: "What greater way to assert our presence, and the indomitability of our traditional culture, than by bringing fifteen or twenty great canoes into a coastal harbor? No one can help but be impressed by the graceful lines of these majestic ocean vessels (Neel, 1995: 4)." By the time the Makah were planning their whale hunt in the mid-1990s, the canoe had come to symbolize unity, strength, and identity among Northwest Coast peoples, and was already being used as a spiritual, and a political, tool.

The Makah had participated in many of these paddling events in a canoe made for them by the Haida, the Hummingbird. On one trip they defied the Coast Guard’s disapproval of their travel plans to follow traditional routes to neighboring tribes. After the paddle, it is remembered, someone said, "Now we can go whaling" (Sullivan, 2000: 55). The canoe is not just a way of moving through space, but a vehicle to go back in time to transform the present.

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