Vancouver showcases Indian art

Feb 23, 2010, 14:00 GMT

Vancouver - Anyone touching down in Canada during the Olympic Games will encounter the art of the country's indigenous people as soon as they step off the plane.

In Vancouver, venue for the current winter games, visitors arriving at the airport will see totem poles, masks, massive ornaments and carved figures.

Among the most popular of the latter are Thunderbird, Killer Whale and Spirit Bear, which embody the mythology of people who have inhabited Canada's Pacific Coast region for thousands of years, people such as the Haida, Tsimshian and the Kwakwaka'wakw.

The airport possesses an impressive collection of their artwork. In the arrivals hall for international passengers Jade Canoe, a monumental bronze sculpture by sculptor Bill Reid, is an eyecatcher.

It shows humans and animals in a canoe together navigating the river of life. The sculpture is depicted along with three other works by the Haida artist on the Canadian 20-dollar bill.

Nine other totem poles stand in Vancouver's Stanley Park at Brockton Point just a few steps from the sea. They reflect the legends and traditions of the people.

Anyone wanting to experience the history of these indigenous people must learn to read their totem poles, it is said. They archive testimonials from the world of ancestors, their beliefs, their societies, their economic conditions and their aesthetics.

Previously, totem poles were erected only for special occasions such as a wedding or a daughter reaching puberty. Guests were invited as witnesses to the events and at the end were richly rewarded for their participation.

Such celebrations, which included singing and dancing, were known in the region, today the Canadian province of British Columbia (BC), as potlatch ceremonies. The ceremonies were held in the family home and their main purpose was the redistribution of wealth.

Today totem poles are carved only for the purpose of being sold. Price depends on the amount of time spent carving the pole. Typically, one that takes about a year to make would cost about 10,000 Canadian dollars (9,588 US dollars).

Several of the forms and symbols used fall under a sort of patent protection. They may be used only by the clan that traditionally possesses them.

The same thing applies to stories, devotional songs and dances. They are family heirlooms and are told exclusively by mouth from one generation to the next.

Canada's First Nations experienced a bitter loss of these very personal cultural exchanges in the last century. At the end of the 19th century the government forbade all potlatch ceremonies, rituals, devotional songs and even gatherings of more than three people.

It confiscated masks and robes, set fire to totem poles and put thousands of indigenous children into residence schools under the authority of Christian churches with the goal of turning them into well-adapted members of the new society.

The potlatch was not made legal again until the 1950s and old customs were given renewed life. The last residence school was closed in the 1980s.

Bill Reid made it his mission to rescue what could still be rescued. He learned the knowledge of his ancestors from the few elders who still knew it. He then passed it on to a circle of students.

He sense of creativity was unbelievable. He carved, sculpted, made jewellery and told the stories of his mother's clan.

More than anywhere else Reid is celebrated in BC as an important artist and as a driving force for the renaissance of an aboriginal art that was threatened with extinction.

The Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Art in the centre of Vancouver is dedicated to him.

There and in Vancouver's Museum of Anthropology on the campus of the University of British Columbia, as well as in the Squamish Lil'Wat culture centre in Whistler, where the ski events are taking place, is where Olympic visitors can delve into the culture of BC's First Nations.