SFU Indigenous Curriculum Resource Centre
Salish Weave Box Sets: Art & Storytelling Project
Guiding Bibliography
To begin understanding Indigenous storywork, storytelling, and art practices before holding conversations with Salish Weave Collection artists, we read all the relevant literature we could find on these topics, with a focus on Indigenous sources.
Below is a recreation of the annotated bibliography that was written by Courtney Vance between May-September 2021. It is understood as a living document, which can never officially be “finished” in the sense that there are resources we will add over time when they arise in our lives and research. This is also to recognize that what is included is nowhere near the full extent of
resources which could be.
It is designed to be read in whole, top to bottom. Scroll through and identify which sources seem most interesting to you and go from there!
Indigenous Storywork
Q’um Q’um Xiiem
(Stó:lō First Nation)
Indigenous Methodologies
Dr. Jo-Ann Archibald (Q'um Q'um Xiiem) developed the term storywork to describe using First Nations stories and storytelling for educational purposes.
She states we cannot truly have Indigenous education without our hearts, minds, bodies, and spirits working together (Archibald, 2008).
Q'um Q'um Xiiem's profile on UBC
Two-Eyed Seeing and other lessons learned with a co-learning journey of bringing together indigenous and mainstream knowledges and ways of knowing
Cheryl Bartlett
Murdena Marshall
(Mi'kmaw First Nation)
Albert Marshall
(Mi'kmaw First Nation)
These three authors come together to describe two-eyed seeing as a lens where those familiar with both Indigenous systems and western knowledge systems can combine the two in order to approach a challenge or task at hand through a unique perspective. Marshall describes it as:
"Two-Eyed Seeing refers to learning to see from one eye with the strengths of Indigenous ways of knowing and from the other eye with the strengths of Western ways of knowing and to using both of these eyes together”
(Bartlett, Marshall, & Marshall, 2012, p. 335).
Integrative Science site for Two-Eyed Seeing
Indigenous Storytelling as Research
Judy Iseke
(Métis Nation of Alberta)
We drew on Judy Iseke's assertions that:
“the need for Indigenous interpretations and representations of culture, history, pedagogy and curriculum” (2013, p. 560) are integral and that:
“Indigenous storytelling pedagogies encourage broader understandings of identity, community, culture and relations” (2013, p. 573).
Indigenous Methodologies: Characteristics, Conversations and Contexts
Margaret Kovach
(Nêhiyaw & Saulteaux,
Treaty Four, Saskatchewan)
Indigenous methodologies require ongoing dedication to conducting research in a good way, known as miyo-wîcêhtowin in Cree as good relations. This includes:
(1) identifying and following ethical responsibilities within Indigenous research practices,
(2) learning respectful protocol and maintaining meaningful relationships
(3) understanding the self in relation to research and the implications that are intrinsically linked between researcher and research.
Kovach explains that introducing Indigenous knowledges into academic discourse must ethically include acknowledging the influence of colonial relationships and histories.
Conversation Method in Indigenous Research
Margaret Kovach
(Nêhiyaw & Saulteaux,
Treaty Four, Saskatchewan)
We used Kovach's conversational method when speaking with artists in the collection:
“a) it is linked to a particular tribal epistemology (or knowledge) and situated within an Indigenous paradigm; b) it is relational; c) it is purposeful (most often involving a decolonizing aim); d) it involves particular protocol as determined by the epistemology and/or place; e) it involves an informality and flexibility; f) it is collaborative and dialogic; and g) it is reflexive” (2010, p. 43).
From ‘Decolonized’ To Reconciliation Research in Canada: Drawing From Indigenous Research Paradigms
Deborah McGregor
(Anishinaabe)
McGregor states that “Decolonizing research approaches require constant attentiveness to colonial influences,” and cannot be seen as solely centred on empowering Indigenous peoples in academia, but it also requires those in power to shift their power and privilege (2018, p. 819).
Along the same lines, she explains that the dominant paradigm of extracting knowledge from Indigenous peoples must shift to one of collaboration and partnership.
Re-Conceptualizing Research: An Indigenous Perspective
Naadli Todd Ormiston
(Northern Tutchone & Tlingit; Wolf Clan)
Indigenous worldviews include the spiritual belief which acknowledges how powerless humans are “in comparison to the vast and incomprehensible forces of the universe (Ross, 1996, p. 69)” (2010, p. 52). Oral traditions are central to Indigenous teachings with the understanding that “incorporated into the voice of the self is the voice of the “cultural collective”” (ibid).
Ormiston states: “The path towards self-determination means we will provide our own solutions to our own problems and bring life to the elements of our lives that have sustained us since time immemorial” (2010, p. 55).
Towards Projects in Humanization: Research on Co-Creating and Sustaining Dialogic Relationships
Timothy San Pedro
& Valerie Kinloch
San Pedro and Kinloch explain that in order to achieve a reciprocal relationship between researchers and participants, we must go beyond and practice listening as a means of building, developing, and sharing our own stories with those who have shared with us, rather than listening simply for the extraction of what benefits our research (2017, p. 378S).
They argue that this practice allows researchers to:
“become part of a shared story that involves an inward, reflexive process of recalling memories from our lives and an outward, generative cycle of being in conversation and knowledge building with others” (2017, p. 379S).
Decolonizing Methodologies
Linda Tuhiwai Smith
(Ngāti Awa and Ngāti Porou, Māori)
Tuhiwai Smith argues that in order to begin decolonizing our methodologies as researchers we must understand the deep implications that exist within the histories of research and knowledge production.
She underlines that as Indigenous researchers we must be clear about our intentions, and that we “need to have thought about the larger picture of research and have a critical analysis of our own processes” (2012, p. 230).
Crossing Methodological Borders
Christine Rogers Stanton
Stanton highlights decolonizing research methodologies as needing to focus on respectful collaboration, dynamic storytelling, and reciprocity throughout the research process (2014, p. 573).
Stanton describes three guiding values of CBPR:
“Scholars should recognize and value the community as a partner in the process, research should be comprehensively collaborative, and results should benefit all partners through continuous action and clear applications” (2014, p. 574).
Sharing Circles: An Indigenous Methodological Approach for Researching With Groups of Indigenous Peoples
Amanda R. Tachine
(Diné),
Eliza Yellow Bird
(Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara)
& Nolan L. Cabrera
These authors come together to describe their experience using sharing circles as an Indigenous research methodology.
They draw on Margaret Kovach’s (2010) definition to describe sharing circles as an “open-structured, conversational style methodology that respects story sharing within a Tribal cultural protocol context” (2016, p. 278).
They go on to explain that building rapport is critical to qualitative forms of research in social science inquiry because it establishes trust between researcher and participants, thus allowing for an unedited free flow of ideas from participants (2016, p. 282).
Indigenous Studies: Indigenous Research Methodologies
Dalhousie University
In this video Dr. Monica E. Mulrennan and Dr. Shawn Wilson (Opaskwayak Cree from Northern Manitoba) briefly discuss the importance of decolonizing research processes that have historically attempted to kill Indigenous ways of thinking and being.
Considering the Landscape of
Indigenous Research
Canadian Hub for Applied and Social Research
This video documents the Rethink Research conference hosted at the University of Saskatchewan through the Canadian Hub for Applied and Social Research in 2017. Key speakers include Margaret Kovach (Nêhiyaw and Saulteaux) and Dr. Priscilla Settee (Cumberland House Swampy Cree First Nations).
INQ13 | Linda Tuhiwai Smith and Eve Tuck - "Decolonizing Methodologies”
The Graduate Center, CUNY
This is a recording of The Graduate Center City of the University of New York’s inquiry of “Reassessing Inequality and Reimagining the 21st Century: East Harlem Focus”. This seminar focuses on Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s Decolonizing Methodologies, alongside Unangax̂ scholar Eve Tuck and her work in relation to Smith’s book.
Indigenous Art/Pedagogies
Wrapped in Wool: Coast Salish wool weaving, Vancouver’s public art, and
unceded territory
Alison Ariss
Ariss begins by criticizing the way Salish weavings have not been considered art until recently, despite the rich history of Salish weaving practices and argues that it is necessary to include in order to understand contemporary Northwest Coast Indigenous art (2018, p 1).
She argues for a reconceptualization of the framework of Northwest Coast Indigenous art to include Salish weavings as a valued practice, rather than how it has been devalued and understood as domestic and decorative using everyday objects in the guise of Euro-colonial art standards (2018, p. 6).
For Ariss, this has allowed Salish weaving to be framed as a domestic craft, and its “well- established social political importance for Salish communities” has been overlooked (6). This is most explicit in the history of erasure by the
Canadian state and government in its attempt to assimilate Indigenous culture by criminalizing Indigenous cultural practices through the federal Indian Act (2018, p. 5). However, Salish weavers have persisted and continued to practice their crafts and artistic endeavors despite systemic attempts at erasure (2018, p. 5).
Krista Point, Robyn Sparrow, Debra Sparrow, Gina Grant and Helen Callbreath, Out of the Silence, 1996. Hand-dyed, hand spun sheep’s wool. Each 4.9 x 1.5m. Courtesy Vancouver Airport Authority (YVR).
Photos by Kenji Nagai. (Ariss, 2018, p. 6).
Contemporary
Coast Salish Art
Rebecca Blanchard
& Nancy Davenport
Blanchard and Davenport state that Coast Salish artists have made stories and myths of Salish culture tangible through carving, weaving, and painting on every day or ceremonial objects which illustrates “the belief that objects are endowed with an intangible power that links human lives to a greater spirit world” (2005, p. 4).
Congruent with Coast Salish culture, Coast Salish artists are materializing this spirit, the stories and legends which weaves generations through communicating the wisdom of those who came before to whose time it is now (2005, p. 4).
Coast Salish artists have adapted and embraced materials now found in the urban environment, and this demonstrates Coast Salish perseverance through maintaining traditional art practices while using contemporary materials and showcases the resilience of Coast Salish artists amidst ever-changing conditions on their ancestral lands (2005, p. 4).
Unsettling Settler
Colonial Feelings
Through Contemporary
Indigenous Art Practice
Injeong Yoon-Ramirez & Benjamin W. Ramirez
These authors argue that “contemporary Indigenous art practices operate as pedagogical sites for challenging and reorienting normalized settler colonial feelings toward Indigenous survivance, instead of settler futurity” (2021, p. 115). Specifically, they critique
the history of settler colonialism in art and education, through the colonial representations of Native Americans and the ways that 19th century romantic painters depicted nature as empty land waiting for colonial settlement (119). They explain that settler colonial studies shift away attention from the effects of colonialism on Indigenous peoples and toward non-Indigenous social life, political attachment, and modes of being which the authors deem as significant as it highlights how non-Indigenous populations sustain colonial forces and maintain oppressions in the present (119).
To combat this history, Yoon-Ramirez and Ramirez emphasize that art can function as a site where scholars can dismantle colonial logics and feelings through art education as a field (2021, p. 120). As such, it has the potential to shift its discourse away from settler futurity through critiquing and challenging normalized perceptions of settler colonialism through creative and pedagogical practices.
Record, (re)create: contemporary Coast Salish
art from the Salish Weave Collection
Toby Lawrence, India Young
& lessLIE
(Cowichan, Penalakut & Equimalt)
This book showcases a selection of works from the Salish Weave Collection, at the time still a private collection of George and Christiane Smyth. Lawrence explains in the introduction that this selection of works reflects the interconnected elements of tradition, innovation, community, and familial connectivity in a contemporary context. She articulates that the works in the Salish Weave Collection negotiates “the interrelationality of the traditional and contemporary, to record history, to recreate form, and to create new works that simultaneously uphold the relevance of history and communicate the importance of change in the contemporary world” (2012, p. 8).
“Various works in the Salish Weave Collection reflect a cultural interaction between tradition, modernity, and post-modernity,and go beyond the cultural continuation of traditional Salish design and iconography” (2012, p. 16).
lessLIE discusses post-colonial and post-modern reflections on contemporary Coast Salish art through Coast Salish spindle whorls and their circular form. He breaks down his thought process through the idea of spindle whorls and what they represent for Salish societies, where wealth was in the
form of weavings to which spindle whorls were an essential element.
Young shares:
“Where the personal is so often eradicated from the contemporary Western art world, on the coast, the arts articulate personal relationships; they express the personal engagement of artists with their homeland; they communicate the artists worldview to their public; and they personify a community who has historically been silenced” (19).
Canadian Indigenous Literature and Art: Decolonizing Education, Culture, and Society
Carol A. Mullen
Indigenous art can represent “Indigenous protest through artistic imagery that unmasks tribal injustices of the past and present” (2020, p. 79).
Therefore, we must recognize that Indigenous art can be a political act, as well to express Indigenous sovereignty in the face of colonial pushback. Mullen (2020) expands on these understandings by stating that Indigenous artwork in a public curriculum can ameliorate critical analysis of colonial injustice and offer possibilities for Indigenous solidarity, agency, and activism.
Critical creative pedagogies:
a decolonial and Indigenous
approach using visual arts and creative writing
Carlos Rivera Santana
& Graham Akhurst
(of the Kokomini)
Rivera Santana and Akhurst argue that creative writing and visual arts grounded in critical decolonial, and Indigenous theories can provide space where decolonized knowledge becomes possible (2019). Thinking with Nakata (2017), they contend that it is only possible for meaningful centering of Indigenous perspectives to occur through a theoretical disruption of colonial educations (2019).
They assert that art and creative writing are vehicles to Indigenous philosophies, what they otherwise define as a praxis to decolonial thinking (2019, p. 4). They elucidate that art is “a productive space
to express the complexities of contested colonial histories between non-original inhabitants and Indigenous peoples” (4).
Additionally, they draw from Larissa Behrendt’s (2015) argument that Indigenous art in spaces can reassert Indigenous ownership, presence and knowledge within spaces that have been historically created and maintained to reinforce power and elitism (4).
Utilising PEARL to Teach Indigenous Art History: A Canadian Example
Carmen Robertson
(Scots-Lakota)
PEARL is described as an intertextual and interdisciplinary theoretical
framework, and Robertson explains that the acronym PEARL encompasses multiple meanings and directions, including diverse pedagogical positions.
‘P’ involves “political, performance, process, and place-based concepts”;
‘E’ “resonates with Indigenous ways of teaching and learning where engagement with course content demand a range of emotion, empathy, and embodiment”;
‘A’ “reflects terms such as active, anti-racist, and anti-colonial”;
‘R’ “illustrates relational, reflective, and reflexive dimensions”, and Robertson adds respect, responsibility, relevance, and reciprocity as these align with Indigenous knowledges and methodologies;
‘L’ refers to lifelong learning which is an integral part of Indigenous education (2012, p. 61).
Robertson contends that each of the attributes of PEARL are teaching and learning modalities which are a part of transformative education, and a means to begin discussing the decolonizing messages present in most contemporary Indigenous art (2012, p. 61).
Native art of the Northwest
Coast :a history of changing ideas
Charlotte Townsend-Gault, Jennifer Kramer
& Ki-Ke-In
(of Ahawinis Reserve)
This anthology holds chapters by twenty-eight contributors, but three main authors who came together to present this expansive archive. The primary argument of this book is “the idea of Northwest Coast Native art has been historically constructed through texts as much as through the global diaspora of the objects themselves” (2013, p. 1).
The authors explain that conflicting definitions of “art” are entangled in historically shifting ideas about racial and cultural differences apparent in state policy and legislation, institutions, and in disciplinary histories including anthropology, archeology, social geography, history, art history, and law (1).
Coast Salish Art in the 21st Century
Burke Museum
The Burke Museum presents panelists Shaun Peterson, Heather Johnson Jock, lessLIE, Luke Marston, and Danielle Morsette discussing contemporary Coast Salish art. The artists begin by introducing themselves
and their backgrounds.