The Klahoose First Nation

Klahoose elders and knowledge holders recall vividly a time when our ancestors walked freely throughout the territory. Village sites dotted the landscape and our big houses hosted frequent potlatches that both honoured and reflected our sacred traditions. Our people welcomed European explorers to our shores and extended the hand of hospitality when early settlers followed.   

The arrival of the church ushered in a new era which infiltrated all areas of our traditional life, including the ceremonies and practices related to death. Our people had a long-established practice of tree and cave burials and of placing sacred items with our dead to ensure they had all the necessary tools to help them transition safely to their next life. Copper, silver, and cedar bark pieces along with treasure boxes filled to the brim, were placed alongside the body and were afforded the same sacredness as the person themselves.   

At a time when the Doctrine of Discovery formed the ideological belief system of the non-indigenous colonizing population, the removal of human remains from their intended resting place was justified. If in life the person was not Christian, then in death, they were not human. We believe that under this guise, our sacred burial sites were pillaged, and our ancestors removed without consent, and in most instances, without community knowledge. Our most recent calculations suggest more than three-hundred (300) ancestors and their related burial items were removed. And so, in the fall of 2017, a systematic approach to locate and repatriate our ancestors and their sacred burial items began. 

Like all indigenous communities, we face the difficulty of deciphering early documentation and accession records related to our community, along with the demoralizing impact of no record keeping at all. The Klahoose First Nation is further hindered by the tendency of early explorers and anthologists to amalgamate us with our sister tribes, the Tla’amin (Sliammon) and Homalco peoples resulting in a sub classification referred to as Malaspina or Mainland Comox. This occasionally results in confusing and frustrating ownership questions further hindered if ancestors or artifacts are attributed to lands located within our shared territory boundaries.  Such challenges necessitate a flexible approach and open mindedness when investigating collections. 

The search for our cultural patrimony is embedded in our efforts to locate and repatriate ancestral remains. Our land and waters provided ample, year-round access to food and housing which enabled elaborate cultural customs to emerge. Highly formalized, distinctive and stylized artistic expression reflected the stories, songs and dances of the potlatch resulting in the primary design elements on which Northwest Coast art depends. 

Form lines are continuous with flowing, curvilinear lines that turn, swell and diminish in a prescribed manner. They are used for figure outlines, internal design elements and in abstract compositions. Throughout the region, special objects were and are still made for the purpose of displaying the inherited privileges and rights of their owners. Although ways of reckoning kinship vary between groups, people claiming common descent also claim rights to ancestrally derived territories, spirit powers, names, songs, dances, crests, and other "properties" that both contain and display their family's wealth and identity. 

Crests, or heraldic art, are objects associated with the potlatch. A crest itself is a concept, usually but not always referring to animals (both natural and supernatural like the thunderbird), which is given a conventionalized representation. Details of the crest images vary widely, according to personal and stylistic preferences.  Northwest Coast societies were unique in that they sustained a group of professional male artists who were largely freed from the general quest for food by the support of wealthy patrons who commissioned works for potlatches and winter dances. 

Weavers produced twill-plaited blankets in geometric designs out of goat wool, cattail fluff, and the hair of a small dog, extinct since early contact times. Painting and relief carving is geometric — circles, chevrons, crescents, rows of dots, triangles, and T-shapes. Scholars have noticed these elements revealed a negative (recessed) form line-type design that is considered by some to be an ancestor of the northern form line tradition more common among the Haida which may reflect interactions between the two nations. Strong, simplified human and animal sculptures — house post, coffins, grave posts, and a single-mask type— were also made alongside elaborate basketry of many shapes, sizes and uses. 

The creation of beautiful and practical objects served as a means of transmitting stories, history, wisdom, and property from generation to generation. Our art tied us to the land reflecting our histories on totem poles and within our big houses – the symbols depicted were a constant reminder of our birth places, lineages, rights and privileges although generally the style was minimalist and straight forward. The abundance of natural resources and the affluence of our Nation afforded the opportunity for the creation of art pieces which served practical purposes such as tools, weapons of war and hunting, transportation, cooking, and shelter, while others were purely aesthetic. At times and for special occasions and potlatch giveaways, there was a distinctive crossover which melded form and function resulting in ornately carved canoes, bentwood boxes, rattles, feast bowls and the like. Even our very clothes were steeped in a rich tradition that produced woven hats, cloaks and blankets of bark and spruce root, robes, body armor and masks. Although common, beautifully carved spindle whorls and specially designed combs for wool paid homage to the women who mastered this unique skill.