Fri May 7 detailed schedule

Taking Power from the Whites: Coast Salish Grave Markers in the Settlement Era

Abstract

In an earlier piece of writing,[1] I observed that because Indigenous People believed in a world of spirits, they assumed on their first meetings with Europeans that the newcomers also had spirit helpers. Noting that Europeans had access to certain goods and technologies, Indigenous people were anxious to learn about the powers that might be obtained from these new sources. Using images of grave markers from collections in England, Canada, and the United States, rendered from around the Salish Sea and   between the 1820s and 1860s, this presentation argues that there was a distinct artistic and cultural period between the arrival of Europeans and the widespread adoption of Christianity by First Nations in which Indigenous people incorporated elements of European power into their own spirit world.  Widespread missionization erased this period of experimentation and hybridization.

Presenter(s)

John Lutz, University of Victoria

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