HuupuKwanum Tupaat/Out of the Mist: Treasures of the Nuu-Chah-Nulth Chiefs

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian Studies at
Concordia University and an avid outdoor recreationist. She is also the
author of The Mountain Is Moving: Japanese Women’s Lives, Kurlek, and
Margaret Laurence: The Long Journey Hom

Out of the Mist is the catalogue for a traveling exhibition, first shown
at the Royal British Columbia Museum (RBCM), of the art, artifacts, and
culture of the Nuu-chah-nulth, whose territories lie along the outer
coast of Vancouver Island and on the American Olympic Peninsula. Martha
Black, curator of ethnology at the RBCM, and the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal
Council have chosen highlights from collections in some 20 museums in
Canada, the United States, and South Africa. The works are on loan to
this first exhibition of Nuu-chah-nulth art and artifacts.

The catalogue features many fine color and black-and-white photographs.
Beautiful, intricate baskets show the extraordinary range and skill of
the Nuu-chah-nulth weaving tradition. Striking ceremonial
objects—colorful rattles, masks, head dresses, and curtains—convey
awe, power, wisdom, and sometimes humor.

Some contemporary works have been carved for the fine-art market as
well as for feasts and ceremonies, while whalers’ hats of plant fibre
and cedar bark date from the 18th century. The Nuu-chah-nulth say,
“Our history in this land runs to the place before time.”

As Black observes and the photographs show, the artifacts elucidate for
nonaboriginal people the philosophical, religious, and personal
connections between the objects and the communities that created them.
The artifacts also make bridges between cultures; the RBCM staff feel
personally enriched by the teachers of the Nuu-chah-nulth people.

Large portions of the text consist of descriptive and anecdotal
comments by the Nuu-chah-nulth on the materials and methods used in
their creations. One says, “There’s a power and effortlessness that
comes out of the old masks.... They were made by people within the
culture, who lived the culture.”

Out of the Mist reveals and documents a rich tradition and culture; at
the same time, it marks a new stage of cooperation and understanding
between creators and recorders.