Greetings friends, fans, foe and lovers,
it's april, it's beautiful out, the winter is pretty much over! the days are getting longer, and the long dark winter nights are but a bitter memory. for today's post, i'm sharing some photos of traditional Nlaka'pamux cultural items. a chief's head dress, some weaving and basketry and a fish net. our people were pretty ingenious, and where here for thousands of years. we're only finding remains older than a few hundred purely by accident! a few years ago we put in a new water treatment system, finally, and accidentally uncovered the remains of a man and a boy.
both were ceremonially buried, covered in ochre powder, and sent to the spirit world with a salmon and dried berries and other items such as a pipe and buckskin clothes. they were estimated to be 2000 years old and only discovered by accident when digging for the pipes for the water system. we were in tune with the environment and lived here for thousands of years without disrupting it, unlike today, look at the world around us.
i look at cultural items differently now, with reverence, because i'm learning how these things were made, all by hand and made to last and be shared. indian hemp was a tall plant, that frayed and was turned into rope, clothes, netting and whatever else was needed. the weaving and basketry could be used for cooking, holding water, cups, and lasted for years. but when it outlived it's purpose, it could be tossed away and return to the land because it was from the land. i think that's what made it easier for colonizers to feel no pity and i'm reading documents and books from the mid to late 1800's and they considered us "backwards" and having no culture. everything was oral culture, passed down in stories and songs, everything we made returned to the land from what it was made.
our houses were pithouses and teepees, and you probably drive by entire villages and don't even know it. whenever they build a highway or add on to train tracks they inevitably stumble across remains of a village, or people. the old "historical" documents i read are just brutal, racist, condescending and tragic. they justified trying to wipe us out and the wholesale pillaging and exploitation of our land. it is no wonder things are such a mess these days and our people are still here through it all, reclaiming the land, the language and the culture one day at a time.
until next time,
Chris Bose.
ps: i'm also working on language videos for the Cook's Ferry Indian Band they can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjAp3U0iyAqyysW22aqG9k_x0_CdY0wJG
Spence's Bridge, BC
a couple N'shaytkin (ancestors) and the
Shawniken kinemux mountain in the back ground
or the "chief's head"
N'shaytkin
N'shaytkin (ancestors)
i think this photo is around 1900
and was taken somewhere around the Kumcheen reserve
also, in the background the landslide hadn't happened yet.
update: this photo is from 1868, more specifically
photograph: Fredrick Dally, 1868, The Nincumshin Tribe of Indians on the Thompson River. Source: Earth Line and Morning Star book. RBCM PN 1424
a chief's head dress
a large bag
detail of weaving
context of how big some of the bags were
of the purpose i have no idea
another hat
another view of the head dress
colour!
another hat, i'm guessing a more modern one with glass beads.
netting for a dip net. indian hemp and the rings are made from deer antlers
ingenius is it not?
