#Chilkat robes

[superinjun]

Sealaska Heritage Institute is holding a Chilkat Robe Welcome Home ceremony today that will be broadcasted live (03/01/24) at 12pm pacific time

this is to welcome home a historic chilkat robe that was purchased and donated to SHI. this event and livestream are open to the public.

learn more about Sealaska Heritage Institute here:

[antiquesfreaks]

We've got a terrifying and/or terrific episode for you today!

Our old shipmate Hannah Haverkamp returns to regale us with the historical inspiration behind the costumes of The Terror! For all your age of sail, nautical, polar exploration, Victorian, historical-fiction-with-a-supernatural-twist needs. Featuring Royal Navy uniforms (and their lack of uniformity), Inuit engineering, and the thematic tragedy of Carnivale.

Hannah’s Sources

Parks Canada "Dressing For Arctic Expedition"

Terror Camp 2022 Keynote: Annie Symon (Costume Designer)

Terror Camp 2021 Panel D - Costuming: Alexa Figuerres (Uniforms and Undress), and Kit Barton (Carnivale)

"Tales of the Doomed Franklin Expedition Long Ignored the Inuit Side, But “The Terror” Flips the Script" - Kat Eschner, for Smithsonian

DRESSED TO KILL: BRITISH NAVAL UNIFORM, MASCULINITY, AND CONTEMPORARY FASHIONS 1748-1857 – Amy Miller

THE ROYAL NAVY 1790-1970 – Robert Wilkinson-Latham HOW TO READ A SUIT – Lydia Edwards

Ken’s Sources

Erebus by Michael Palin

Terrorspotting by Tealin on tumblr

every post collected under our Terror tag on tumblr

Dee’s Sources

‘Our ancestors returned home’: How a Chilkat robe made its way back to Southeast Alaska by Tripp J Crouse, KTOO

watching the ding-danged show The Terror (2018) season one on AMC

[omgthatdress]

dress by Mrs. Walking Sun, Nadoka (Assiniboine), 1941, The Royal Ontario Museum

Chief American Horse's Outfit, 1900-1913, The McCord Museum

Chilkat robe, Tlingit, 1860, The Fenimore Art Museum

Inuit Girls

Three Blackfeet Chiefs

Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs protesting

Cree women in powwow regalia

White men in Canadian Tuxedos

[formlines]

Blue and Red (Where Little Bear Learned to Hide from the Sun)

Ursala Hudson

from the website: “My mother was a Chilkat ceremonial regalia maker, and now I am one too. Weaving regalia for ceremony can be a heavy responsibility, as a finished robe embodies generations of ancestral knowledge and hundreds of hours of technical labor. At the same time, it is a great honor to be the instrument through which our ancestors speak their stories and dreams.

One of the most influential mentors in my life has been Cecil Touchon, who is a non-Indigenous American contemporary artist and theorist. Cecil was a close friend of my family and spent many studio hours training us in the art of collage. He encouraged us to collage on watercolor paper with large blank margins on all sides, and to work intuitively, simply, and quickly. Collage work became a fun family pasttime growing up, and allowed us a regular practice in traversing the present moment, outside of ancestral tradition or the weight of preparing for ceremony. It was another way to bring together my family of mixed heritage and culture.

In Blue and Red, I use my primary art medium of Chilkat and Ravenstail weaving of my Tlingit homelands to depict an abstract contemporary “collage” on woven “watercolor paper” with large margins and my signature “signed” on the bottom edge. Instead of three hours of cutting and pasting, this weaving took over 50 hours from start to finish. I honor my greatest influences, from both within and without my Indigenous heritage, respecting the profoundly valuable lessons they both have offered me. “Blue and Red” tells a story about the contemporary Indigenous present.”

– Ursala Hudson

[morgenlich]

WE ARE THE OCEAN, Ursala Hudson. Collar: Merino wool, silk, steel cones, leather. Ravenstail patterns, crochet, basketry twining technique. “Woman as a Wave” (robe): Merino wool, silk, cedar bark. Chilkat and Ravenstail techniques, crochet, basketry twining technique. “Tidal” (apron): Merino wool, silk, leather, steel cones. Chilkat and Ravenstail techniques.

We Are the Ocean is an ensemble comprised of a collar, apron (entitled Tidal), and shawl (entitled Woman as a Wave). The collar and bottom edge of the shawl are twined using a basketry technique to bring delicacy to the regalia, made specifically to emphasize the wearer’s feminine essence. In place of the sea otter fur that traditionally lines the top of Chilkat and Ravenstail weavings, the merino weft yarns were used to crochet the collar and shawl’s neck lines, bringing forward and incorporating a European craft practiced by both my maternal (Tlingit/Filipino) and paternal (German) grandmothers. The high neck of the collar gives tribute to the Western aesthetics that have forever influenced the Indigenous cultures of our lands; with grace, we embrace that which cannot be undone, and use our new form to be better. The apron’s pattern was studied and graphed from an old Tlingit cedar bark basket, and represents the tides of our lives, as our lessons continue to arise in a revolving cycle, yet made of new debris. The repetitive pattern of the shawl represents the infinite connectedness of our sisters, mothers, aunties, and daughters. Blue lines break up inverted rows, representing the “past,” “present,” and “future,” acknowledging these concepts as irrelevant constructs that fall away when we commune with the Divine. The entire ensemble is worn to evoke the innate spirit of the Woman as an ethereal deity, that resides within us all.”

[popculturelib]

Barbies of the BPCL: Northwest Coast Native American Barbie

This Barbie is part of the Dolls of the World collection from 2000. The description from the Barbie collection reads:

Yake'i ixw sateeni! (It is good to see you!) I'm Northwest Coast Native American Barbie doll from Alaska, land of the last frontier. My people live in the Northwest Coast and panhandle area of Southeast Alaska. It is called the panhandle area because it looks like the handle of a frying pan. I am wearing our beautiful ceremonial dress with a Chilkat Robe, traditionally woven from cedar bark and mountain goat hair. Now, I'm ready for the Winter Ceremonials, where we sing and dance, feeling close to the spirits of nature, as our ancestors did. Please come to visit Alaska soon! Tsu yei ixwa sateeni! (I'll see you again!)

Check out our other Barbies at #bpcl barbies.

The Browne Popular Culture Library (BPCL), founded in 1969, is the most comprehensive archive of its kind in the United States.  Our focus and mission is to acquire and preserve research materials on American Popular Culture (post 1876) for curricular and research use. Visit our website at https://www.bgsu.edu/library/pcl.html.

[charring58]

Chilkat weaving is a traditional form of weaving practiced by Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, and other Northwest Coast peoples of Alaska and British Columbia. Chilkat robes are worn by high-ranking tribal members on civic or ceremonial occasions, including dances. The blankets are almost always black, white, yellow and blue.

[ilikepomegranites]

Why does Indigenous artwork go so hard though?

I swear the tribes of the Pacific Northwest are on the next level when it comes to making something beautiful. Chilkat blankets???? Formline design??? Transformation masks????? they are so incredible it's unbelievable. Picasso can lick the shoes of these people. I had no idea that formline design basically invented visual punning. The use of negative space is out of this world It's amazing how they can keep tradition alive whilst still keeping such an ancient within the present. I love how all the Chilkat robes look SIMILAR but not the SAME. The same style has been passed down generations and through the Indian act and is still being made today!!

How cool is it that people from Tlinkit, Kwakwaka'awkw and Haida tribes can look at a Chilkat robe and literally see their family history spelled out before them in art. 🤩🤩

Now THAT'S heritage!

Go check out Lily Hope she is such a skilled weaver:

[stephendavid]

Chilkat #2, Stephen David Jones (WanJuXiong) This is the second in the series, and my favorite painting. I painted this after I bought some books on Pacific Northwest Coast Indian/Native American Art and looked closer at a number of photos of real Chilkat blankets/robes. I really like the geometric designs, along with the many eyes and the central masked face.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

A man who helped return a 140-year-old Tlingit robe to the British Columbia First Nation where it was created says it’s as if the regalia called out to its people and they are bringing it home. The intricately woven Chilkat robe, made of mountain goat wool and yellow cedar bark, was purchased by the Taku River Tlingit First Nation in northwestern B.C. for almost $40,000 after it went up for sale online by a Toronto-based auction house last year. The robe arrived in Whitehorse Wednesday and will travel 175 kilometres south to the First Nation’s traditional territory in Atlin, B.C., where it’s expected to go on display and may be used in future ceremonies. While the community celebrates the return of a piece of its heritage, the First Nation said Indigenous people should not be forced to buy back regalia that was stolen from them. [...]

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[gornwen]

Shout out to my alma mater for their part in this story♡ Not that I would expect anything different; every person who works at the Burke is incredibly invested in doing right by the People of the Pacific Northwest.

This is why museums matter. This is why funding the liberal arts matters.

Sara Jacobsen, 19, grew up eating family dinners beneath a stunning Native American robe.            

Not that she gave it much thought. Until, that is, her senior year of high school, when she saw a picture of a strikingly similar robe in an art history class.

The teacher told the class about how the robe was used in spiritual ceremonies, Sara Jacobsen said. “I started to wonder why we have it in our house when we’re not Native American.”

She said she asked her dad a few questions about this robe. Her dad, Bruce Jacobsen, called that an understatement.

“I felt like I was on the wrong side of a protest rally, with terms like ‘cultural appropriation’ and ‘sacred ceremonial robes’ and ‘completely inappropriate,’ and terms like that,” he said.

“I got defensive at first, of course,” he said. “I was like, ‘C’mon, Sara! This is more of the political stuff you all say these days.’”

But Sara didn’t back down. “I feel like in our country there are so many things that white people have taken that are not theirs, and I didn’t want to continue that pattern in our family,” she said.

The robe had been a centerpiece in the Jacobsen home. Bruce Jacobsen bought it from a gallery in Pioneer Square in 1986, when he first moved to Seattle. He had wanted to find a piece of Native art to express his appreciation of the region.

       The Chilkat robe that hung over the Jacobsen dining room table for years.   Credit Courtesy of the Jacobsens      

“I just thought it was so beautiful, and it was like nothing I had seen before,” Jacobsen said.

The robe was a Chilkat robe, or blanket, as it’s also known. They are woven by the Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian peoples of Alaska and British Columbia and are traditionally made from mountain goat wool. The tribal or clan origin of this particular 6-foot-long piece was unclear, but it dated back to around 1900 and was beautifully preserved down to its long fringe.

“It’s a completely symmetric pattern of geometric shapes, and also shapes that come from the culture,” like birds, Jacobsen said. “And then it’s just perfectly made — you can see no seams in it at all.”

Jacobsen hung the robe on his dining room wall.

After more needling from Sara, Jacobsen decided to investigate her claims. He emailed experts at the Burke Museum, which has a huge collection of Native American art and artifacts.

“I got this eloquent email back that said, ‘We’re not gonna tell you what to go do,’ but then they confirmed what Sara said: It was an important ceremonial piece, that it was usually owned by an entire clan, that it would be passed down generation to generation, and that it had a ton of cultural significance to them.“  

Jacobsen says he was a bit disappointed to learn that his daughter was right about his beloved Chilkat robe. But he and his wife Gretchen now no longer thought of the robe as theirs. Bruce Jacobsen asked the curators at the Burke Museum for suggestions of institutions that would do the Chilkat robe justice. They told him about the Sealaska Heritage Institute in Juneau.

When Jacobsen emailed, SHI Executive Director Rosita Worl couldn’t believe the offer. “I was stunned. I was shocked. I was in awe. And I was so grateful to the Jacobsen family.”

Worl said the robe has a huge monetary value. But that’s not why it’s precious to local tribes.

“It’s what we call ‘atoow’: a sacred clan object,” she said. “Our beliefs are that it is imbued with the spirit of not only the craft itself, but also of our ancestors. We use [Chilkat robes] in our ceremonies when we are paying respect to our elders. And also it unites us as a people.”

Since the Jacobsens returned the robe to the institute, Worl said, master weavers have been examining it and marveling at the handiwork. Chilkat robes can take a year to make – and hardly anyone still weaves them.

“Our master artist, Delores Churchill, said it was absolutely a spectacular robe. The circles were absolutely perfect. So it does have that importance to us that it could also be used by our younger weavers to study the art form itself.”

Worl said private collectors hardly ever return anything to her organization. The federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act requires museums and other institutions that receive federal funding to repatriate significant cultural relics to Native tribes. But no such law exists for private collectors.

       Bruce and Gretchen Jacobsen hold the Chilkat robe they donated to the Sealaska Heritage Institute as Joe Zuboff, Deisheetaan, sings and drums and Brian Katzeek (behind robe) dances during the robe’s homecoming ceremony Saturday, August 26, 2017.   Credit NOBU KOCH / SEALASKA HERITAGE INSTITUTE      

Worl says the institute is lobbying Congress to improve the chances of getting more artifacts repatriated. “We are working on a better tax credit system that would benefit collectors so that they could be compensated,” she said.

Worl hopes stories like this will encourage people to look differently at the Native art and artifacts they possess.

The Sealaska Heritage Institute welcomed home the Chilkat robe in a two-hour ceremony over the weekend. Bruce and Gretchen Jacobsen traveled to Juneau to celebrate the robe’s homecoming.

[bm-americas]

Chilkat Blanket, 18th century, Brooklyn Museum: Arts of the Americas

This blanket is very early and possibly Tshimshin in origin. Ceremonial blanket with black, blue, yellow and white design probably the "Diving Whale." The head of the whale with his nostrils is at the bottom, the center face is his body with his 'spirit' inside it, the tail flukes are spread out on lower section also with eyes inside. The front flukes flank the head.The side panels (not shown in photograph) are probably a young raven. Although very worn this is a very finely woven, old robe with no commercial elements in it. There is an artist signature in the weaving by the side fringe. This is possibly the same robe depicted in G.T Emmons, "The Chilkat Blanket," AMNH Memoirs, Vo. 111. part 1V, fig. 568B. Source for design and weaving information, Cheryl Samuels, "The Chilkat Blanket," Pacific Search Press, Seattle, 1982. See also her dedication page where signature of weaver is given , appears to be the same as this blanket. Size: 53 15/16 x 69 1/8 in. (137 x 175.6 cm) Medium: Mountain goat wool, cedar bark, caribou or whale sinew, dye

https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/30640

[salvadorbonaparte]

Tlingit Resources

This is a Chilkat mask and robe by Lily Hope and Ricky Tagaban which you can learn more about watching this video

Wikipedia

Omniglot

Alaska Native Languages

Yukon Native Language Centre

Tlingit Language Website

Dictionary

Grammar

Podcast

The sound of the Tlingit Language

An Introduction to Tlingit Sounds

Sealaska Heritage Institute Youtube

Memrise

Memrise 2

Learning Tlingit App

Tlingit is a Na-Dene language spoken in what is now Canada (Yukon, British Columbia) and the USA (Alaska, Washington). It used to be written with the Cyrillic Alphabet but is now using the Latin Alphabet. 

[formlines]

Chilkat Blanket Necklace

David Neel

from the website: From my childhood I wanted to be a Kwakiutl artist. My first piece of Northwest coast Indigenous art was a painting, which I did when I was 8 years old, which based on a Chilkat blanket that I saw in a National Geographic magazine. Ever since that time I have wanted to do another art work based on the Chilkat style design. I came upon the idea to make a pendant with a Chilkat style design, using 23K gold (96.5% pure)  wire to symbolize the distinctive goats wool fringe. I then inlaid the eyes, not with abalone shell, but with 23K gold to compliment the gold “fringe”. The result is a one-of-a-kind necklace that pays homage to the Chilkat robes, which came to the Kwakwaka’wakw from the Tlingit people through marriage.

- David Neel

[fishstickmonkey]

Chilkat Robe

Chilkat, Northwest Coast, Alaska

Wool

Penn Museum

[lionofchaeronea]

Chilkat robe (dyed goat wool) of the Tlingit people of the Pacific Northwest.  Now in the Alaska State Museum, Juneau.