As Grandmother Taught: Women, Tradition and Plateau Art was a special exhibit at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture in Spokane, Washington. The exhibit featured several Plateau cradleboards. The Indian nations of the Columbia River Plateau are shown above. Cradleboards allowed infants to be carried easily and safely. They also allowed the mother’s hands … Continued
The Artic Culture Area includes the Aleutian Islands, most of the Alaska Coast, the Canadian Artic, and parts of Greenland. It is an area which can be described as a “cold” desert. Geographer W. Gillies Ross, in his chapter in North American Exploration. Volume 3: A Continent Comprehended, writes: “The North American Arctic is usually … Continued
The Inuit are a Native American people whose homelands are in the Canadian Arctic. A special exhibit at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture in Spokane, Washington, featured The Inuit Art of Povungnituk. Povungnituk is a village on the eastern shores of Hudson Bay in Arctic Quebec. This artwork provides some insights into the … Continued
In museums, textbooks, the popular media, and college classrooms, American Indians are often kept in the ghetto of the past. Displays of American Indian art often focus on the past both in terms of when the art was made and the images shown. Indian people did not disappear nor did they stop producing art at … Continued
The Eastern Woodlands refers to the vast area in North America which is basically east of the Mississippi River. Anthropologists generally divide this area into two major culture areas: the Northeastern Woodlands and the Southeastern Woodlands. The shaded area on the map shown above shows the Woodlands culture area. The Maryhill Museum of Art near … Continued
The Salish-speaking First Nations whose aboriginal homelands included the Pacific coast area of present-day Washington and British Columbia have a long tradition of weaving. Weaving styles were owned by families and were passed down from mother to daughter or from grandmother to granddaughter. In an essay in Listening to Our Ancestors: The Art of Native … Continued
The Great Plains is the huge area in the central portion of the North American continent which stretches from the Canadian provinces in the north, almost to the Gulf of Mexico in the south, from the Rocky Mountains in the west to the Mississippi River in the east. This is an area which contains many … Continued
As Grandmother Taught: Women, Tradition and Plateau Art was a special exhibit at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture in Spokane, Washington. The exhibit featured the works of three Plateau women artists: HollyAnna Cougar Tracks DeCoteau Little Bull, Bernadine Phillips, and Leanne Campbell. The Columbia River Plateau is shown above. HollyAnna Cougar Tracks DeCoteau … Continued
Many museums, including the Maryhill Museum of Art near Goldendale, Washington, have displays of Mission Baskets. The designation “Mission Baskets” was developed by anthropologist Alfred Kroeber in 1922. According to the Maryhill Museum display: “Basketry from most of southern California has traditionally been grouped together under the name Mission. This term was used because the … Continued
The Great Basin Culture Area includes the high desert regions between the Sierra Nevada and the Rocky Mountains. It is bounded on the north by the Columbia Plateau and on the south by the Colorado Plateau. It includes southern Oregon and Idaho, a small portion of southwestern Montana, western Wyoming, eastern California, all of Nevada … Continued
