Views of Sequim, the Olympic Peninsula. . .and beyond
The Peninsula College Longhouse multipurpose room has Native American artwork on display. This is “Portrait of an Ancestor” by Makah artist Greg Colfax.
This is “Wild Woman of the Woods” by another Makah artist, Micah McCarty. I’ve heard a couple of versions of the wild woman legend this represents. They seem to center around fierce old women who lurk in the woods, ready to snatch up bad children.
This grouse feather fan was one of two on display at the Makah Regalia Exhibit in the Longhouse at Peninsula College. Fans have significance in Native American dance ceremonies and can be used to dispatch prayers to the heavens. They are also used in smudging or purification ceremonies to circulate purifying smoke.
Two of these beautiful fans are on exhibit with a vest displaying a Makah family design. The red shapes are the profiles of traditional Northwest dugout rowing boats. I believe the silver shapes represent whale tails.
It’s necessary to squeeze behind the display case to see the back of the vest but its distinctive design is well worth the effort.
The gallery at the Peninsula College Longhouse is not large, located just inside the front door. This mask and rattles are among the first items on display from the current Makah Traditional Regalia exhibit.
Like the shells on the dress I showed you yesterday, rattles can be used to keep rhythm during dance ceremonies. Click here if you’d like to learn more about their symbolic use.
These child’s moccasins looked soft as a cloud and were simply precious.
The Makah exhibit is on display until August 30th. The Longhouse is open on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
The Longhouse at Peninsula College has a new exhibit, “Makah Traditional Regalia.” The Makah are one of our local Native American tribes, living at Neah Bay, remote and beautiful lands at the furthermost Northwest tip of the continental U.S. The exhibit features items used during Makah Days celebrations, a sort of tribal family reunion, in the month of August. This dress was on display.
I assume that this is a dance dress. It makes generous use of olive shells and beading as well as tiny abalone shell buttons.
The shells are attached so they dangle and can freely move with a dancer. The tiny shells would make a soft rattling sound with rhythmic moves plus add visual movement as a dancer steps.
The Peninsula College Longhouse is the first traditional longhouse in the nation on a community college campus. It was built as a collaboration between the Peninsula College and six Tribes in our region, the Hoh, Quileute, Makah, Port Gamble S’Klallam, Jamestown S’Klallam and the Lower Elwah Klallam. The Longhouse is known as the Longhouse “House of Learning” and it functions as an art gallery featuring Native artists as well as hosting tribal ceremonies and and a variety of programs from film screenings and classes to study halls and summer camps.
The interior great room is warm and welcoming, styled with updated features that are reminiscent of a traditional longhouse, including long benches along the walls, a skylight to represent a traditional smoke hole and sunlight cast onto the floor to represent a fire pit.
Native art and carvings line the walls of the great room. There are masks which represent traditional mythological creatures, drums, a painting, and an eagle blanket that was created as a joint project by a student group.
This is a detail of one of two wolf masks carved by Quileute Tribal Member David Jackson and designed by Evinjames Ashue of the Hoh Tribe.
I have additional photos of Longhouse artwork that I plan to post from time to time. There is some beautiful art there.
There was an exhibit of the beautiful wood carvings of Dusty Humphries, Sr. at the Longhouse of Peninsula College in Port Angeles recently.
Humphries’ work features traditional Native American themes. These handmade tools were part of the display.
Most tool users can appreciate the beauty of these pieces.
Can you make out the piles of wood chips in this old photograph? This is a massive tree trunk being worked into a traditional Native American boat, chip by chip. The Native woodworker here is using an adz, variations of which are shown in the top photos. The man was photographed around 1914-15 by Fannie Taylor, an early postmistress in Mora, an early white settlement on our coast that no longer exists. This photo was in an office in the Longhouse.
Come back tomorrow to have a look at some of the work of Dusty Humphries, Sr.