IN-PERSON London. Section B

Abstract

Tourists and locals alike associate Seattle, Washington, the Pacific Northwest’s largest city, with totem poles, an Indigenous archetype that looms over the city’s streets, parks, and waterways. Yet, this region has been inhabited since time immemorial by Coast Salish communities, whose Native artistic customs did not historically include totem poles, and whose traditional art forms have been slow to receive acclaim within their own territory. Specifically, Seattle represents the urban homeland of the (Coast Salish) Duwamish Tribe, whose attempted erasure during the settler colonial era (1850s-early 1900s) is directly tied to the slow growth of modern Coast Salish art in the city. In contrast, Kwakwaka’wakw, Haida, and Tlingit-style artistic creations, representing non-Seattle tribes who inhabit a more northern locale, have proven popular amongst non-Native audiences in Coast Salish country. Employing historical and public art case studies from Seattle, this paper examines the ways in which Duwamish presence was intentionally written out of metropolitan narratives—as well as how Seattle’s embrace of non-local Indigenous art followed broader academic and anthropological trends that strategically neglected Coast Salish cultures. In response, 21st century Coast Salish artists have gradually produced contemporary art displays throughout the city, representing artistic acts of resistance and territorial demarcation. Such installations are monumental in their intervention, albeit subtle when compared to the more dramatic totems that the general public associates with Seattle. This “new” mode of local public art offers covert yet powerful critiques of urban amnesia and simultaneously communicates that Duwamish communities never ceased to exist in Seattle.