1. Two key aspects of Northwest Coast are a strong sense of the paradoxical nature of the human condition, and an awareness of possibilities for

hidden within the mundane.

2. The role of art in the contemporary politics of has deep roots on the Northwest Coast, where art has long been a key means of expressing group identity and political power.

3. Visual art and are integral to the narration of family histories. Inherited images, known as , symbolize these histories. When they are properly presented and witnessed at ritual ceremonial celebrations, known as , their crests and their stories explain, validate, and reify the traditional social order, and affirm the acquisition of by members of high-ranking families and the ownership of land.

4. The Northwest Coast was one of the most densely populated regions in the world where subsistence was based on , hunting and gathering rather than on farming.

5. Red and yellow was the most important source of wood for carving utensils and art objects and for building the large multi-family plank houses constructed throughout the region.

6. European explorers began to visit the Northwest Coast during the late 18^th century and an active rapidly developed around the market for sea-otter pelts.

7. Nineteenth century fur trade and increasing white settlement rapidly destabilized cultural patterns of long-standing. Disease killed many people who held knowledge, and who would normally have important rank and privilege.

8. are great feasts where chiefly knowledge is publicly

acknowledged.

9. Contact with outside materials and new people with trade items enriched the artistic supplies of Northwest Coast art-makers. . Tools resulted in the enlargement of some carvings, including totem poles. It also enhanced the importance and numbers of that embody a family’s wealth when presented at potlatches. Other materials, such as trade cloth, mother-of-pearl buttons and silver coins stimulated the creation of entirely new art forms for internal consumption such as the blanket and engraved silver bracelets.

10. Northwest Coast systems of stylization and composition used in painting, carving and textiles has come to be called “form line style”. These are three basic approaches to the overall representation of an animal or human; the , in which a being was shown in profile in a relatively straightforward manner; the , in which some body parts were omitted or redistributed; and the

, in which a radical rearrangement of the features and limbs occurred, usually filling the whole space in a composition but rendering the subject difficult to identify.

11. Three design units that are the building blocks of Northwest Coast art the

, the U-form and the . The limited number of basic design units gives rise to a characteristic representational feature of Northwest Coast art … the style lends itself to the creation of visual in which a particular form can be read simultaneously as part of two different, overlapping images.

12. Visual arts are related both to the distinctive exchanges that have occurred over time and also to the contexts of expression that are important in that place.

13. People traditionally acquired during puberty exclusion, and these bestowed abilities such as exceptional skill in basketry or in the hunting of certain animals.

14. The shared iconography of religious and political art can be detected in many important types of objects. The representation of special powers of

becomes a general metaphor for .

15. The lager and more familiar units of visual art are the more complex groupings of humans and animals known as crests. These are exclusive designs that can only be used by their rightful owners, powerful families who control and resources. Through shared crests, families recognize different levels of relationship. Some peoples are divided into , or into several systems, and a family’s crests include those of the moiety or clan as well as those owned individually. No two families will possess exactly the same set of . Crests are displayed as a way of advertising the status and identity of family members.

16. The most famous and dramatic mode of crest display is the crest or totem pole. There are five distinct kinds of crest poles:

a.

b.

c.

d.

e.

17. Families also display their crests on objects that are visible only on ceremonial occasions, such as , dance , and masks. The complete set of crests belonging to a family will be represented individually on its clan hats, frontlets and button blankets. The most important occasion for such displays is the potlatch.

18. Potlatches include feasts at which rights to the inheritance of wealth and power are displayed and validated. A great family shows its worthiness to inherit and hold titles by:

a.

b.

c.

d.

19. During the 19^th century competing religious and political systems increased the pressure on the traditional institutions of Northwest Coast life and art. In 1885 the

was outlawed, thus threatening with a single act the system that guaranteed the survival of indigenous , , and traditional . Even though potlatching continued in secrecy, the ban was not dropped until 1951.

20. During the twentieth century a new era of art-making opened and many traditional forms have been made again and others reinvented to fill the gaps colonial repression created in use and memory. The vital link between and has also been reasserted in these years.