Explore the past and present near San Juan Island's American Camp

For the past 20 years, Julie Stein, executive director of the Burke Museum and a professor of Archaeology at the University of Washington, has led walking tours on the southern edge of San Juan Island in Washington’s Strait of Juan de Fuca within the Salish Sea. The people who come on these tours are curious about one thing: stories of people and place. And on Julie’s tour, those stories extend back thousands of years.

This year marked what may be Julie’s last tour, but if you didn’t get to go on one, you can still draw on your powers of observation and curiosity—as well as this DIY (do-it-yourself) tour guide—to enjoy a rich investigation into the past and present of San Juan Island.

Julie Stein, executive director of the Burke Museum, has offered archaeology-based walking tours on San Juan Island for the past 20 years, but the premise of her tours can be readily adapted by anyone—it all starts with questions. Photo credit: John Howell, Cedar River Group

Parrington artifacts: A collector's story



Vernon L. Parrington in his office at the University of
Oklahoma, ca. 1905. Photograph courtesy of Sarah Parrington.

Objects in museums hold many stories—often of their makers and users, and also, sometimes, of their collectors.

That's the case with several beautiful Native American artifacts recently donated to the Burke Museum from the family of Vernon Louis Parrington, a longtime English professor at the University of Washington (UW) in the early 1900s.

Parrington was born in Illinois in 1871. He graduated from Harvard College in 1893 and taught English for four years at Emporia College in Kansas before moving on to teach at the University of Oklahoma.

The Carved Legacy of Snohomish Cultural Leader William Shelton

 

William Shelton, Model Story Pole,
Snohomish (Tulalip Indian Reservation),
Southern Coast Salish. Ca. 1920s.

By Christy Hansen
Guest writer, Ethnology

From the late nineteenth-century through the early decades of the twentieth century, white American culture embraced the notion of the Native American culture as rapidly disappearing. The popular visual iconography of the totem pole, along with the feathered war bonnet and teepee, had come to be interpreted as an exotic and spellbinding relic of a "savage" "vanishing race" by whites, and miniature carved model totem poles became popular souvenirs from curio shops to commemorate a visit to a Native village along the northern Northwest Coast. Urban stores, such as the landmark Ye Olde Curiosity Shop in Seattle, Washington (founded in 1899), offered model totem poles for sale, as well, to those who may never even have traveled to villages of the Haida, Tsimshian or Tlingit - northern Northwest Coast Native cultures from which totem poles originated.

The totem pole, which had become a symbol of "a generalized American Indianess," was not a traditional art form of the Southern Coast Salish – the grouping of over fifty autonomous Native American tribes which populate the Puget Sound Basin in Washington State.

Amongst the Coast Salish peoples, traditional religious beliefs did not tolerate extroverted art forms such as the heraldic totem poles of the northern Northwest Coast cultures; thereby, making the circa 1920s Snohomish (a group of the Southern Coast Salish) model totem, or story, pole (pictured at right) so fascinating.

Unpacking a Phrase: The Chilkat Blanket

 

Figure 1: Chilkat Dancing Blanket, Tlingit, late 19^th-century. Courtesy of the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, 1-1587.

My first encounter with the alluring and boldly graphic ceremonial dancing blanket, known extensively as the Chilkat blanket, was this past summer. A friend had asked me to assist in suspending one of these northern Pacific Coast Native woven creations from a wall in his gallery, and I was at once taken aback by the complex, fractured design, the striking tightness of the weave and the subtle—yet impactful shifts—in the blanket’s texture, as well as the rhythmic nature of the limited color palette.  What awed me the most, though, struck me while gently encouraging the layers of fringe cascading from the base of the design field to lay flat against the wall.  It was at this point that my friend enlightened me to the fact that the vertical strands (known as the warps) concealed beneath their fluffy vanilla exterior of mountain goat wool a heart of cedar bark, which provided stability and substance to the blanket. These vertical warp strands function as the supporting ribs for the whole textile, and were breathtakingly delicate to the touch! As I ran across historic photograph after historic photograph within the Burke’s Ethnology Archives depicting noble Tlingit and Haida figures enveloped in these expressionistic and esteemed Chilkat blankets (Figure 2), I knew that I needed to explore the cultural identity embedded in these woven garments.

 

Figure 2: A photograph taken in the commercial photography studio of Case & Draper based out of Skagway, Alaska in the beginning years of the 20^th century documents Chief Anotklosk of the Tlingit Taku wearing his opulent ceremonial Chilkat dancing blanket in the traditional manner. (Courtesy of the Burke Museum of Natural History & Culture, Case and Draper Collection.)

Unpacking a Phrase: What is a Chilkat blanket? What Native culture was the brainchild of this weaving art?

Video: How does a new exhibit get installed at the museum?

The latest Burke exhibit Weaving Heritage: Textile Masterpieces from the Burke Collection opened on Saturday. It's a beautiful exhibition, artfully displaying 130 of the most aesthetically and culturally significant textiles from the museum's collection of over 2,000 textile pieces.

Some might wonder, what does it take to install a major exhibit like this? The day after the last exhibit closed, our exhibit prep team was hard at work preparing for Weaving Heritage. Take a look at this short video to see the transformation of the special exhibit gallery from an empty room to a complete museum exhibit:



Weaving Heritage is on view through February 27, 2011. Keep an eye on our website for a list of special weekend weaving demonstrations and other events.

Posted by: Julia Swan, Communications

Photos from Tribal Journey 2010

Last week, 7 members of the Ainu community joined Tulalip Tribes in the Paddle to Makah: Tribal Journey 2010. It was the culmination of a year-long exchange between the Ainu Association of Hokkaido and six Washington tribal communities. Below is a selection of images from the canoe landing at Neah Bay and the Ainu's performance during the protocol ceremonies.

Masashi Kawakami stands in the Tulalip Tribes' canoe as they wait to come ashore.

Landing at Neah Bay after a 7-day journey from Suquamish, WA.

The Ainu are called to perform during the protocol ceremony.

Group picture at Neah Bay.

All photos are courtesy Storms PhotoGraphic. View a complete slide show of pictures from the Tribal Journey here:

Burke Voice Recordings Join "National Recording Registry"

The Leon Metcalf Collection of recordings at the Burke Museum is one of the new additions to the National Recording Registry. Each year 25 recordings (or collections of recordings) are selected by the Library of Congress to be added to a list of "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" recordings. This significant collection was made by Leon Metcalf between 1950-1954 and includes recordings of the First People of western Washington State and many other Native American and foreign languages.

In the early 1900s, Leon Metcalf dropped out of his Marysville, WA high school and began working in a logging camp. He had trouble in school due to a hearing disability and was assisted by a few Snohomish Indian loggers, who took him under their wing, advised him, and taught him some of their language and something about their culture. Thanks to the support he received, Leon returned to school and became a professor and a musician. Years later, Leon returned to Tulalip with a tape recorder to document what he believed was the dying Lushootseed language. (read more about Leon’s story here)


Lushootseed Alphabet. Courtesy of Juliet Shen.

Some of the recordings in the collection were made when he worked for Wycliffe Bible Translators while the Puget Sound recordings were made when he was a student of Mel Jacobs studying western Washington languages. Metcalf's goal in making the recordings was to aid tribal language programs. Among the many individuals he recorded were Ruth Shelton, Susie Sampson Peter, Annie Daniels, Martha Lamont, Willy Gus, Martin Sampson, Silas Heck, Harry Moses, Hal George, Amy Allen, and Joseph Hillaire.

The Metcalf recordings include unique content such as personal messages, conversations, and lengthy myth narratives that filled several reels of tape. The revival of interest in Lushootseed language through the work of Upper Skagit elder Vi Hilbert, owes much to this collection, which has been the source of material for language instruction projects and numerous publications since the 1970s.

The Leon Metcalf audio collection was donated to the Burke in 1970 and is housed in the Ethnology Archives. Thanks to their inclusion in the National Recording Registry, the Leon Metcalf collection of recordings will be even more available to interested individuals across the United States.

If you would like copies of these tapes, please contact Ethnology staff. A nominal cost is charged to make copies. 

And they're off!

This post is a part of a series about a year-long cultural exchange the Burke Museum is leading between the Ainu Association of Hokkaido and six tribal groups in Washington: The Duwamish Tribe, The Makah Nation, The Suquamish Tribe, The Squaxin Island Tribe, The Tulalip Tribes, and The House of Welcome Long House at Evergreen State College. In 2008 the Ainu were formally recognized by Japan’s government as the nation’s “first peoples.”

After many months of anticipation, the week-long Tribal Canoe Journey to Makah began this morning from Suquamish. Several members of the Ainu community will be paddling in canoes with the Tulalip Tribes and will head north from Suquamish through the Puget Sound and Strait of Juan de Fuca on their way to Neah Bay, stopping at designated camp sites along the way to eat and sleep. Upon arrival at Neah Bay on June 19, the Ainu will be the first group to present their heritage to the other groups, as they will have traveled the farthest to participate in the Canoe Journey.

Participation in a big event such as this requires training, so Ainu interns Akira Kikuchi and Masashi Kawakami spent the last several weeks attending paddle practices with the Tulalip. Watch this short video below to get a sense of what the paddling is like:



Yesterday, I joined some coworkers in a trip out to Suquamish to facilitate media coverage of the Ainu’s participation in the canoe launch. What started as a gray rainy morning turned into a beautiful sunny afternoon, and we watched with excitement as about a dozen canoes from around the Puget Sound approached the shore at Suquamish.

Tatsuya Kawakami, Miki Yamashita, and Kiyomi Ichinoseki, arrived in Seattle a few days ago to join Masashi and Akira on this Ainu cultural exchange:


The visiting Ainu men and women helped carry the boats to shore:


Northwest Indian News came to conduct interviews for a story about the Ainu that will air later this summer:


After camping at Suquamish last night, the canoes launched this morning to begin their trip to Neah Bay. Good luck to all who are involved in this journey!

Posted by: Julia Swan, Communications

Japanese Ainu to Paddle in Tribal Canoe Journey

This post is a part of a series about a year-long cultural exchange the Burke Museum is leading between the Ainu Association of Hokkaido and six tribal groups in Washington: The Duwamish Tribe, The Makah Nation, The Suquamish Tribe, The Squaxin Island Tribe, The Tulalip Tribes, and The House of Welcome Long House at Evergreen State College. In 2008 the Ainu were formally recognized by Japan’s government as the nation’s “first peoples.”

In the culminating event of a year-long cultural exchange between the indigenous Ainu community of Japan and several Washington State tribal groups, a group of Ainu paddlers will join the Tulalip Tribes in the annual Tribal Canoe Journey event, this year hosted by the Makah Nation.

The Ainu will travel the farthest distance of any group to participate in this year’s Tribal Canoe Journey. Similar to Northwest Coast indigenous communities, canoes have long played an important part in the lifestyle and livelihood of the Ainu. The Ainu are currently undergoing a major cultural revival and participation in the Tribal Canoe Journey offers the opportunity to reconnect with long-held canoe paddling traditions.

Two Ainu interns, Masashi Kawakami and Akira Kikuchi, have spent the past eight weeks in Seattle, creating an exhibit and a study kit about Ainu culture for the Burke. Kawakami and Kikuchi will be part of the Ainu delegation to participate in the Canoe Journey.

Journey to Makah

The Tribal Canoe Journey is an annual event that celebrates the thriving canoe culture among Native communities along the Pacific Northwest Coast. Each year, a different nation hosts the event and thousands of people make the journey from their home to the host nation by way of ocean canoe. The Makah Nation, located at Neah Bay on the Olympic Peninsula, is hosting the 2010 Canoe Journey.

Starting in early July, over 100 canoes representing about 40 indigenous groups from Washington, Oregon, British Columbia, California, Hawaii, and New Zealand will begin their trip from their home bases to Neah Bay. Each group of paddlers will coordinate their trip to arrive at Neah Bay on Monday, July 19. From July 19 – 24, each tribe will take turns sharing their songs, dances, and stories.

The Ainu Association of Hokkaido will send up to eight paddlers to participate in the Canoe Journey. The week of July 12, the Ainu paddlers will join members of the Tulalip Tribes and other host communities as they launch a canoe from Suquamish, WA. The group will paddle north through the Puget Sound and Strait of Juan de Fuca on their way to Neah Bay, stopping at designated camp sites along the way to eat and sleep. Upon arrival at Neah Bay, the Ainu will be the first group to present their heritage to the other groups, as they will have traveled the farthest to participate in the Canoe Journey.

Support for this exchange has been provided by the Museums & Communities Collaboration Abroad (MCCA), which is a program of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the US Department of State in partnership with the American Association of Museums (AAM).

Photos: (top) Masashi Kawakami attends a canoe practice in preparation for the Tribal Canoe Journey; (bottom) Akira Kikuchi (left) and Masashi Kawakami, both Ainu interns who have spent the past 8 weeks in Seattle developing an exhibit about Ainu culture at the Burke Museum, stand in front of the Tulalip Tribes’ canoe at a recent paddling practice.

Ainu Interns Come to Burke

This post is a part of a series about a year-long cultural exchange the Burke Museum is leading between the Ainu Association of Hokkaido and six tribal groups in Washington: The Duwamish Tribe, The Makah Nation, The Suquamish Tribe, The Squaxin Island Tribe, The Tulalip Tribes, and The House of Welcome Long House at Evergreen State College. In 2008 the Ainu were formally recognized by Japan’s government as the nation’s “first peoples.”

Not long after a group of Burke staff and Northwest Coast tribal representatives returned from their trip to Japan to visit sites of Ainu cultural revitalization, two young Ainu men from Hokkaido arrived in Seattle to begin a four month internship at the Burke Museum.

The two Ainu interns, Akira Kikuchi, 24, and Masashi Kawakami, 27, arrived in Seattle on April 13 and will stay in the United States through July to learn museum curatorial skills that they can take home and share with the Ainu community. Akira and Masashi are among the first Ainu people to travel to the United States to learn about museum studies.

While here, Akira and Masashi will spend their time developing an educational kit about Ainu heritage that will be available for use by educators in Washington State through the Burke Box program. The two interns will also curate a small exhibit of Ainu cultural artifacts purchased by and gifted to the Burke Museum. Finally, Akira and Masashi will contribute to a documentary film about Ainu culture that is being produced through the Native Voices film program at the University of Washington.


In this photo, Masashi (left) and Akira (right) stand next to a collection of Ainu cultural objects that were recently acquired by the Burke Museum. The patterned robe in the foreground is called an attush. It is a man’s robe, woven by female relatives out of elm bark and cloth, to be worn on special occasions.

This exchange is supported by a grant from Museums & Communities Collaboration Abroad (MCCA), a program of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the US Department of State in partnership with the American Association of Museums (AAM).

Curator's Travel Journal: A Trip to Japan

This post is a part of a series about a year-long cultural exchange the Burke Museum is leading between the Ainu Association of Hokkaido and six tribal groups in Washington: The Duwamish Tribe, The Makah Nation, The Suquamish Tribe, The Squaxin Island Tribe, The Tulalip Tribes, and The House of Welcome Long House at Evergreen State College. In 2008 the Ainu were formally recognized by Japan’s government as the nation’s “first peoples.”

In December, the Ainu and Pacific Northwest cultural exchange began when a group of 10 Ainu delegates came to the United States to travel around the Northwest, meeting and learning from tribal representatives here. In March, 11 American travelers flew to the island of Hokkaido, Japan to visit sites of Ainu cultural revitalization. The excerpts below are from the travel journals of Burke staff members and organizers of this cultural exchange, Deana Dartt-Newton and Lisa Oliver. To read the full travel journal, visit the exchange’s Facebook page.

Day 1 - First Day in Hokkaido
Our day was spent in Sapporo City with our first stop at the Historical Museum of Hokkaido (pictured below). The museum opened in 1971 as a series of projects commemorating the centennial of Hokkaido although the Ainu were there thousands of years prior to the Japanese. In 1992, the museum's exhibits were revamped and Ainu artists were asked to commission art for the exhibitions and the museum is now working to create more Ainu exhibits. Our next stop was the Sapporo Ainu Culture Promotion Center. This center is the only museum where everything is made by Ainu people. The museum is hands-on so visitors can learn how to weave cattail mats, feel the embroidery on Ainu robes and hear the sounds from Ainu instruments.

Day 2- Trip to Shirao
Today we toured the Shiraoi Ainu Museum (pictured below). Our tour of the Ainu Museum took us through important Ainu traditions such as the “bear sending” ceremony. Just as the Pacific Northwest Coast Indians believe there are two worlds, the spirit world and the human world, so do the Ainu. In the Ainu hierarchy of Gods, Salmon is important but the Ainu of Shiraoi believe that the highest God is the Orca. Each Ainu family had an altar and believed that if the altar was not properly cared for, the gods would be angered and would not provide food for the village. The Ainu also believed that the gods took on the forms of animals. When the Ainu ate the animal it was sending the god back into the spirit world and the god would then provide the Ainu with a bountiful harvest.

Day 3 - Trip to Biratori and Mukawa
After a day of touring museums in Biratori, we headed to Mukawa's Mupet Hall, where we were greeted by a hall full of women dressed in traditional Ainu robes. We were escorted to our seats and waited for introductions. The Mukawa Ainu Cultural Preservation Society perform traditional Ainu dances and songs and teach these cultural traditions to the youth so that they can pass them down to future generations. They treated us with several dances and songs. When it came to the final dance all of us were invited to join. Each of us were given an Ainu robe to wear for the dance. It was truly an unforgettable experience!


Day 4 – Trip to Akan
It was a long journey from Mukawa to Lake Akan (pictured below). Our 4.5 hour drive took us through beautiful snow covered terrain where we saw red fox in the forest and hawks in the sky. When we arrived to Lake Akan we had lunch in a small restaurant in the Ainu kotan area. The Ainu kotan area is a section of land that the Ainu lease. On this land the Ainu can run restaurants, shops and promote Ainu culture without taxes. There are only 3 restrictions on who can lease the land. 1) you must be Ainu, 2) you must promote Ainu culture, 3) you must not allow Japanese people to lease in that area. Here in Akan we saw the swaying willow tree dance. The women, all with long black hair, bend and sway as they sing, flipping and swirling their hair in circles. It’s a striking display, and one we did not see in any other region.


Day 5- Trip to Shibetsu
Our first stop in Shibetsu was to the Shibetsu Municipal History Museum. Here we had a brief tour of the museum and artifacts that tell the history of the area. After our tour we went to the Shibetsu Fisheries Office where we were met by our friend Mr. Ogawa who was part of the delegation who visited Seattle in December. With tea and sweet treats the Fisheries Director talked at length about the salmon industry. Every year they release 100 million salmon from their hatcheries. Most of the salmon caught each year are sent to China where the salmon is processed and then shipped around the world. Only 200 people have fishing rights and (we were very surprised to hear) 60% are of Ainu descent. In order to fish you have to have inherited the fishing rights and be a member of the Fisheries Association.

Goodbye Hokkaido
Our trip to Hokkaido was an amazing experience, one that we will not soon forget. We met many warm and friendly people and learned more about the Ainu culture not only through song and dance but through the various museums we visited. Again, the similarities between the Ainu culture and the cultures of our group (Makah, Quinault, Chumash, Suquamish, Tulalip, Aleut and Chehalis) were numerous.

This exchange is supported by a grant from Museums & Communities Collaboration Abroad (MCCA), a program of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the US Department of State in partnership with the American Association of Museums (AAM).

How to Preserve Marine Algae

During a recent behind-the-scenes tour of the Burke Museum Herbarium, the museum’s curator of botany Richard Olmstead and herbarium collections manager David Giblin told me about the collections, research and scientific contributions from their collection. One thing that stood out to me is that preservation of plant specimens is a delicate art. In the video below, Richard discusses the methods used to preserve marine algae. The process results in beautiful scientific specimens that can be studied for countless years to come.



Find more behind-the-scenes videos and get insider access to the Burke Museum on our Youtube page!

Posted By: Andrea Barber, Communications

Burke Museum Professionals Contribute to Tribal Museum Program

Museums are multi-purpose institutions, and there is no doubt that displaying cultural identities is one of the most important reasons museums exist. Many Washington state tribes run their own museums, but have unique needs to accommodate each tribe’s vision and cultural beliefs.

In order to address the specializations of tribal museums, Dr. James Nason, curator emeritus at the Burke Museum, collaborated with the Tulalip Tribes Native American Career and Educational Program to create a Tribal Museum Program at the Northwest Indian College. The program is a three-course series in collections management, administration and exhibitions/education. All of these courses focus on the specific issues tribal museums face.

Students from the program's tribal administration course. Photo courtesy of A&S Perspectives

Megon Noble, assistant collections manager of archaeology at the Burke, taught the collections management course. Others from the Suquamish Museum and Cultural Center and the Wing Luke Museum are professors for the program as well.

One example of specific collections management needs in a tribal museum is how a museum should handle its sacred objects. Discussions about whether an object should be on display, or whether burial objects should be put back into graves or housed in the museum are few issues analyzed in the Tribal Museum Program.

Nason summed up the importance of museum collaboration perfectly in a UW Arts and Sciences Perspectives article. “As the Washington state museum, the Burke is inherently committed to ensuring that every museum in our community is up to snuff, because our state is best served by every museum being better,” he says. “We have an obligation to help other museums be as effective as they can be.”

To read the full A & S article, click here.

Posted By: Andrea Barber, Communications

A Day in the Life of a Museum Collections Manager

Many of the people on our staff do not hold jobs that are primarily focused on exhibits or public programs, which are the two ways most members of the general public tend to interact with the museum. For all of the exciting things happening in the public spaces of the Burke, there are just as many exciting things going on behind the scenes in the museum collections spaces. Our collections managers and curators across 11 divisions are devoted to caring for over 12 million objects and specimens at the museum that represent the natural and cultural heritage of this region and for making those objects and specimens accessible to researchers and others.

A few weeks ago, Rebecca Andrews, collections manager in ethnology here at the Burke, approached me about making a video that showcases some of the many things she must consider each day in order to best store and protect the Burke ethnology collection of 45,000 objects.

I followed her around for an hour and put together this short video, "A Day in the Life of a Museum Collections Manager." It shows a side of the museum that many people never get to see!



NOTE: If you are having trouble viewing the full video, watch it here.

Watch more behind-the-scenes videos about the Burke Museum collections here.

Posted by: Julia Swan, Communications

Going Behind the Scenes in the Fisheries Collection

Located on the South end of UW’s campus is a fish enthusiast’s dream: the Burke Museum’s Fisheries facility. With over 7 million specimens, the Burke Museum’s fish collections contain the largest number of juvenile and adult fish specimens on the West Coast.

In order to find out more about these diverse collections, I went on a guided tour of the Fisheries facility with curator of fishes Ted Pietsch and collections manager Katherine Maslenikov. Below is a behind-the-scenes video of the tour that includes just a few of the amazing stories I heard about specimens and research in the Burke’s Ichthyology department.



If you are interested in seeing more of the Burke behind the scenes, become a Burke Museum member before our members’ only Behind-the-Scenes Night on April 20th. On that night, members head into the collections storage areas of the museum to meet Burke experts and view collections that aren’t on display in the galleries. It’s a unique opportunity to get up close to some amazing objects and specimens!

Posted By: Andrea Barber, Communications

"What is that?" A series on the outdoor artwork at the Burke, Part 2

This post is the second in a series about the artwork surrounding the outside of the Burke Museum (read the first post, about Mark Calderon’s Pluma sculpture here). In this post, we explore the answer to the commonly asked question: What is that tall female figure just outside the front doors of the Burke?

This Dzunuk'wa figure stands in front of the Burke Museum. Photo by Steve Whiston.

This is a carving of a Dzunuk'wa figure, a supernatural creature with importance to the Kwakwaka’wakw people. This replica was carved for the Burke Museum in 1970 by Curator Emeritus, Bill Holm.

Some people equate Dzunuk'wa, (pronounced D’ZOO-no-kwa) with Sasquatch, sometimes called Bigfoot, the shy hairy giant of the forest. Others view her as a fearsome creature that can be the source of great wealth. The privilege of representing Dzunuk'wa in carving and performance is a prized heritage of some Kwakwaka'wakw chiefs (the Kwakwaka'wakw people live on northern Vancouver Island and the adjacent mainland of British Columbia).

The pole outside the museum is a replica of the original (pictured at right in a 1914 photo by Edward Curtis), which was erected in Gwa'yasdam's village on Gilford Island, B.C in the early 19th century. This kind of pole is sometimes called a "ridicule pole" and these poles were raised to shame someone who owed a debt to a chief. For three years, this original Dzunuk'wa figure faced down the beach toward the owner's in-laws, who had not paid a marriage debt. When the in-laws honored the debt, the pole was pivoted to face the water. To acknowledge the payment of the debt, the owner had carvings of shield-shaped coppers added to her head and hands, to represent wealth.

Bill Holm initially painted the Dzunuk'wa figure’s entire body black, based on the black and white historical photos that he was using for reference. But based on later analysis of Emily Carr's colored image, Holm has come to believe the body of the original sculpture was painted red. The replica was changed from black to red in 2002, when it was placed outside the Burke. The head of the original sculpture is also in the Burke Museum's ethnology collections.

Posted by: MaryAnn Barron Wagner, Communications

Celebrating milestones

It's a week of milestones at the Burke Museum: Saturday is the 25th Annual Dinosaur Day and today marks the 300th post to the Burke Blog! To celebrate, we've compiled some of our favorite entries from the past 100 posts.

Behind the scenes with Ray Troll gave a look at how the Burke Museum prepared for the exhibit Cruisin’ the Fossil Freeway.

Q: How does one go about moving 650 pieces of ceramic pottery from the Burke Museum to a new storage facility? A: Very, very carefully detailed how the ethnology department prepared to safely move the ceramic and pottery collection to another storage facility (without breaking anything along the way!).

Favorite New Acquisitions Part 1 and Part 2 listed our curators’ favorite new acquisitions to the collections.

Where can kids dig in Washington? offered parents tips about where their kids can participate in mock archaeological digs around the state.

How can a museum reduce its environmental impact? reflected on the discussions being held around the museum about how to function in the most sustainable way.

Twilight series thrusts Quileute Tribe into spotlight examined the Quileute Tribe’s relationship to the Twilight book and movie series.

The Burke Blog contributors work hard to offer insight into the inner workings of the Pacific Northwest’s only major natural history museum. Thank you for reading the Burke Blog and we look forward to the next 100 posts!

The Case of the Double-Edged Swords

In this behind-the-scenes video, Burke Museum exhibit specialist Arn Slettebak discusses some of his favorite objects in the ethnology collection: a set of pattern-welded steel swords. Arn describes the features of the swords that make them high-quality pieces and talks briefly about each of their histories. Take a look:

Ainu delegates visit Burke for cultural exchange

This week, the Burke Museum welcomed a delegation of 10 members of the Ainu Association of Hokkaido for the first of three visits between Japan and the Pacific Northwest that will take place over the next 9 months as part of an exciting project called “Carrying Traditions Across the Waters of Time: Ainu and Pacific Northwest Cultural Collaborations.”

The central focus of this cultural exchange project is the shared efforts between indigenous people in Japan and the Pacific Northwest to revive ancient relationships to the sea and the canoe. The participants include members of the Suquamish, Duwamish, Tulalip, Makah, and Squaxin Island tribes of Washington State and the Hokkaido Ainu Association of Japan. Together, the participants will share cultural knowledge, broaden public awareness of environmental and social issues faced globally by Native peoples, and gain insight into museum practices in a tribal or inter-tribal setting.


This week’s visit by the Ainu delegation, whose 10 members range in age from 19 to 70 years old, marks the first time all of the participants in this cultural exchange have meet one another. The Ainu delegation will spend the week visiting tribal museums and cultural centers of the 5 partnering tribes from Washington. In March 2010, a group of representatives from the Pacific Northwest will travel to Japan to make similar visits to Ainu museums and cultural centers. Then, in July 2010, the Ainu delegation will return to Washington to participate in an annual tribal canoe journey, hosted by the Makah Tribe in Neah Bay.


Over the next 9 months, the Burke Blog will record the progress of the Ainu and Pacific Northwest Cultural Collaboration, but for the most current updates, follow the project on Facebook.

This exchange has been funded by Museums & Communities Collaboration Abroad (MCCA), which is a program of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the US Department of State in partnership with the American Association of Museums.

Photos: Visiting delegates from the Ainu Association of Hokkaido visited the Burke Museum on Monday morning for a welcome breakfast and a tour of the museum.

Twilight series thrusts Quileute Tribe into spotlight

Most people out there, whether they want to be or not, are probably vaguely aware that the second movie installment of the Twilight saga, New Moon, opens soon. Those who live in Washington State may also know that the books and movies of the Twilight series take place in Forks, Washington, which is a real town on the Olympic Peninsula. And those who are familiar with the story know that in addition to sparkly, romantically-inclined vampires, the Twilight books also feature a band of werewolves as primary characters (as seen in the promotional poster to the right). And in the story, those werewolves are all members of the Quileute Tribe, a real culture whose reservation is located in the small coastal town of La Push, which isn’t far from Forks.

Having now been made famous by the on-going, pop-culture phenomenon that is the Twilight series, the Quileute have found themselves thrust in the global spotlight as their reservation has become a tourist destination for thousands of middle-school age girls and their families who may or may not be on the lookout for actual werewolves. In response to their instant popularity, the Quileute seek to inform potential visitors to Forks and La Push about their culture and about the misrepresentation of them as werewolves.

So what does the Burke Museum have to do with any of this? As a museum of cultural heritage, we encourage respect for and understanding of all living cultures in the Pacific Northwest, such as the Quileute. Our curator of Native American ethnology, Deana Dartt-Newton, has therefore partnered with the Quileute Tribe and the Seattle Art Museum to develop several educational tools to inform Twilight fans about the real Quileute culture – a culture that indeed has a wolf origin story, a historic relationship with the wolf as demonstrated in songs, stories, and various art forms, but whose people most certainly do not transform into werewolves even on an occasional basis.

Stay tuned for more details about these projects, but in the meantime, Deana has excitedly reported that Summit Entertainment is flying the Quileute Tribal Council out to Los Angeles for tonight’s New Moon premiere. Let’s hope they enjoy the show!