What is Sacred:

Revitalizing Coast Salish Art and Culture
by

Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun
BA, Vancouver Island University, 2018

A thesis support paper submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
Master of Fine Arts
Emily Carr University of Art + Design
2023
© Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun 2023

Kwulasultun i

Abstract
This thesis examines Coast Salish art and its revitalization through storytelling methodology
as it relates to my own artistic practice. Bringing together visual art, essay, narrative, poetry,
prose, and experimental layout, I examine the complex histories of colonization and ongoing
colonialism in the Coast Salish world. My research has been centered on the quote “Coast
Salish art is to make the sacred visible,” shared by Elder Bill White from my community in
Snuneymuxw. This quote has fascinated and inspired me, leading to the question “What is
sacred?” Through my own art practice in dialogue with lived experience, the teachings I have
received from my family, community, and culture, as well as through my academic training in
philosophy, I ask about what it means for us as Coast Salish artists to make work that represents the sacred; how it facilitates the sacred; the ways that we work in both traditional and
modern contexts; and what was significant about the efforts beginning in the 1970’s by artists
like Susan Point, Charles Elliott, Simon Charlie, Stan Greene, and others to bring traditional
Coast Salish art forms back to the surface. Teachings from my late great-grandmother, Dr.
Ellen Rice White, Kwulasulwut, play an intrinsic role in this text. My goal is to share teachings with future generations of Coast Salish peoples and those who wish to learn about who
we are and our art.
Keywords: Coast Salish art, Coast Salish culture, Indigenous knowledge, Indigenous storytelling

Kwulasultun ii

Contents
Abstract................................................................................................................... i
Glossary................................................................................................................ iv
Acknowledgements.............................................................................................. vii
Introduction............................................................................................................ 1
The Beginning - Our Creation Stories................................................................... 4
Indigenous Storytelling Methodology................................................................... 8
Uy Shqwaluwun as Methodology........................................................................ 10
The Axiology of Coast Salish Art........................................................................ 13
Revitalizing and Reclaiming Coast Salish Art..................................................... 15
Responding to Ancestral Forms...................................................................... 18
Willie Good, Ts’usqinuxun’: The Sacred is Asymmetrical............................. 19
Knowledge Flows Like a River........................................................................... 33
Conclusion........................................................................................................... 43
Bibliography........................................................................................................ 45

Kwulasultun iii

Figures
Figure 01. Xulqalustun...........................................................................................................2
Figure 02. Mary Rice, Xalanamut......................................................................................... 2
Figure 03. “Sil-kar-malth” totem pole carved by Wilkes James............................................5
Figure 04. “We Fell From the Sky / Together and Apart” Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun....7
Figure 05. “Story Time,” digital design, Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun..............................9
Figure 06. Circle, Crescent, and Trigon............................................................................... 11
Figure 07. “Even Bears Pray,” Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun............................................15
Figure 08. Quw’utsun Spindle whorl...................................................................................16
Figure 09. Healing, 2021, Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun...................................................18
Figure 10. 19th Century Coast Salish Spindlewhorl............................................................18
Figure 11. “Raven Steals the Truth / A Prophecy and a Recollection,” detail, Eliot WhiteHill,
Hill, Kwulasultun...............................................................................................20
Figure 12. “Comb”...............................................................................................................20
Figure 13. “Rebuilding, Coast Salish Style,” Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun.....................21
Figure 14. Salish Carved Stone Bowl..................................................................................21
Figure 15. Seated Human Figure Bowl, Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun.............................22
Figure 16. Lot 4094. A Fine and Rare Coast Salish Stone Effigy Carving..........................22
Figure 17. Uy Shqweluwun (To Be of Good Mind), Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun..........24
Figure 18. Qwe’en (Mosquito), Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun..........................................25
Figure 19. not a single Snuneymuxw person is named or referenced in this text, Eliot
White- White-Hill, Kwulasultun.....................................................................................26
Figure 20. Beetle Pendant liberated from the cover of the book, Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun
tun......................................................................................................................26
Figure 21. Artifacts of a Modern Xwulmuxw, Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun...................27
Figure 22. Mother and Child, Isamu Noguchi.....................................................................28
Figure 23. Meat Lover / Stqe:ye’ (Wolf), Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun...........................28
Figure 24. Maquettes for marble slab sculptures set up in Isamu Noguchi’s MacDougal
Alley Studio, Isamu Noguchi.............................................................................28
Figure 25. Sketch cutout for paper maquette, Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun....................29
Figure 26. Untitled (the Picasso One), Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun...............................29
Figure 27. Hands Spindle Whorl, Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun.......................................30
Figure 28. (Right) Embrace, (Left) Reaching for, Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun..............30
Figure 29. Snuneymuxw spindle whorl...............................................................................30
Figure 30. A non-functional table, Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun......................................31
Figure 31. Beetle, Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun...............................................................31

Kwulasultun iv

Glossary
Hul’q’umi’num’ Language: In this document, words in the Hul’q’umi’num’ language are italicized. Other languages and dialects are not. The Hul’q’umi’num’ language is the language of the
Snuneymuxw people and the Coast Salish peoples of the mid-island region on Vancouver Island.
Within Hul’q’umi’num’, Snuneymuxw speaks its own dialect, Snuneymuxwqun (translates literally to “Snuneymuxw throat”). The orthography I use and the Hul’q’umi’num’ words I draw upon
come mostly from my learning with the dictionaries: “Hulquminum Words” (Gerdts et. al 1997),
“Hul’q’umi’num’ to English Dictionary” (Hukari and Peter, 2021), and “‘i’lhe’ xwulmuxwqun”
(Gerdts 1995). I was also taught in my community by Elder Gary Manson, Xulsimalt.
Repetition: Repetition is an intentional device throughout this document. It comes in various forms,
including copy and pasting of certain phrases, telling the same story over and over again in the same
or different ways. Repetition was used by my great-grandmother and other elders who I have sat with.
The same story will be told and retold. This can be to the frustration of Western learners, who I have
read of and heard firsthand insisting “I have heard this story before, we’ve covered this. Can we please
move on?” Often the response is to tell the story yet again. Each time we hear them they speak to us
in new ways in the moment we now inhabit, there are new teachings there. My attempts may be rough
and experimental, so I ask for your patience.
My great-grandmother: When I use this phrase, unless I specifically identify another individual (i.e.
one of my other great-grandmothers), I am referencing Dr. Ellen Rice White, Kwulasulwut. Kwulasulwut is my late great-grandmother on my patrilineal side (my father’s father’s mother). I will speak
extensively about her, her work, and her influence on me in this document.
Alternative Form Text/Layout: To reference Peter Cole (2000) “these literary ‘tactics’ rhetorically
accomplish, then, a significant decolonization, separating Aboriginal being, language and knowing
from the violence brought upon them by English grammar, syntax, spelling, and other never merely
linguistic conventions which have silenced and absented from serious scholarly attention, indigenous
ways of understanding.” I use experimental layout in the text in response to writers before me such
as Peter Cole (St’at’imc), Jordan Abel (Nisga’a), and Stephane Mallarme. I see these poetic forms as
one stream wherein the two adjacent rivers of visual art and creative writing (a false dichotomy that
formed within myself at some point) can meet and intermingle.
S’yuth: This word in Hul’q’umi’num’ is one of three which translate approximately to the English
word “story.” S’yuth refers specifically to “true stories” or histories and legends. In this document,
there are two narratives which are s’yuth. Kwulasulwut S’yuth is a narrative about my great-grandma’s
teachings and life. Kwulasultun S’yuth is a parallel stream of narrative about my own life.
Snuw’uyulh: This word is broadly used to refer to “the teachings.” The teachings are our systems of
knowledge and their transference that we as Coast Salish peoples carry with us. We have received our
teachings through our ancestors and elders and will pass them down to future generations. They have
come to us from the land, from the beings here, from the energies of the universe, and from Xeel’s.

Kwulasultun v
Xeel’s: Xeel’s, the Transformer, is a figure in Coast Salish cosmology who walked the land and
changed things into the way they are now. Xeel’s is the source of many teachings and stories that we
carry with us as Coast Salish peoples today. My great-grandma described Xeel’s as being derived
from xe’xe’, which is sacred, and xews, which is something new. This is the etymology of the word,
but I understand, from teachings that she shared with myself, my family, and Jo-Ann Archibald, and
many others, Xeel’s also as a manifestation of the energy of transformation, and that when the different
energies come together to create something new it is a realization of Xeel’s. We carry Xeel’s with us
through these stories, teachings, and through our own creation and transformation.
Coast Salish: Coast Salish is an overarching group of Indigenous nations from the Pacific Northwest.
Each nation is distinct with their own territory, culture, teachings, and dialects; but we share similarities culturally and linguistically and have bonds of trade, intermarriage, and cultural exchange. Despite vastly different orthographies (how our languages are written) there are commonalities in how
our languages sound, and the words our own dialects. The Coast Salish world extends to Klahuse in
the north, to Cowlitz in the south of Washington state and upriver into the continent, where we border
with the Interior Salish. The international border between Canada and the United States has a profound impact on us, cutting our world in half. “Coast Salish” is a blanket term which does not give
primacy to each nation or language group and it is controversial. It is important to acknowledge the
nation(s) whose territory you are on first, ahead of the overarching group. I feel that we as Coast Salish peoples on a national level need to come together in a stronger way politically, economically, and
culturally; continuing to bring back the ways that our ancestors interacted, which have been impacted
by colonization and ongoing colonialism. Our identities as Coast Salish peoples are pluralistic, we are
our own and we share so much. I celebrate that. Na’utsa mawt shqwaluwun, our beings are one.
Xwulmuxw: This word has most often been described to me as meaning a First Nations Person. In
Hul’q’umi’num’ when we refer to ourselves as a peoples, this word (or xwulxwilmuxw,which is pluralized) emerges. In my learning I have also seen that this word can refer specifically to Indigenous
peoples from Hul’q’umi’num’ and Salishan language speaking peoples. I use this word interchangeably with Coast Salish, First Nations, and Indigenous.
Uy Shqwaluwun: Uy means “good” and Shqwaluwun is a bit more abstract. On a simplistic level, it
has been described as “thoughts, manners” (Gerdts 22) or feelings. I have heard it as referring to both
the mind and the spirit. I have learned, particularly through the work of Diamond Jeness, that in Xwulmuxw ontology, the body, the mind, and the spirit are all interrelated, distinct facets of our being, our
shqwaluwun. As opposed to a Western body-mind dualism we believe in a mind-body-spirit triplism.
Four Stars (* * * *): This is used as a device to delineate shifts between sections of text and narrative.
I have used throughout my creative writing practice, it references my name Kwulasultun (Many Stars).
The stars will be used in various orientations, which I see as constellations.
Ontology: What is real.
Epistemology: What is knowable.
Axiology: What is valuable and how to classify knowledge about it.
Art: Art is whatever you make of it.

Kwulasultun vi

Coast Salish art is to make the sacred visible.
BILL WHITE, Xelimulh, Kasalid

This narrative is not meant to be documentary. In fact it is meant to evade documents. It is
meant for the reader to feel and to say I was
there and indeed I saw.
GEORGE CLUTESI

Kwulasultun vii

Acknowledgements

I first want to acknowledge our ancestors and elders, who have left the path for us to walk and the
teachings for us to carry as we walk in this world.
I hold my hands up to my relatives, the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples, whose
territories I have resided upon and lived with as I complete this work.
I am grateful to my great-grandmother, the late Dr. Ellen Rice White, Kwulasulwut. The work that
she did and the knowledge that she shared has been the ground upon which I stand in this world.
I am grateful to my family. My parents, Ilse Hill and Doug White III, Kwulasultun, Tliishin especially. They are the ones who have made sure that I was included in the teachings, who have empowered
me, who have inspired me, and who are there for me always.
I am grateful to my grandparents and my aunties and uncles and all of my extended family who enrich my life and share so generously and support me.
I am grateful to my communities in Snuneymuxw and Hupacasath, and the nations my family is
rooted in, and to all of my teachers, friends, relations, and everyone who has supported me and has
helped me to become who I am.
I am grateful to my supervisor, Dr. Mimi Gellman, Animkii, who has been like an aunty and whose
steady advice and patience has been the reason I’ve been able to complete this project.
I am grateful to my defense committee, my internal examiner, Lindsay McIntyre, my external examiner, Dr. Jo-Ann Archibald, Q’um Q’um Xiiem, and the defense chair Dr. Randy Lee Cutler, who
have all shared their time so generously with me.
I am grateful in more ways than I can describe to the communities I have found at Emily Carr, in my
cohort, amongst our faculty and facilities staff, and at the Aboriginal Gathering Place. These relationships and shared moments have enriched my time at the school so much.
I am grateful to the Snuneymuxw First Nation, the First Peoples’ Cultural Council, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, and the YVR Art
Foundation, who have provided funding that has made education and doing the work to better myself
accessible.
I am grateful to you, who are taking the time to read my words.

Kwulasultun 1

Introduction
O si:em nu siyeyu’, si:em nu shxwuweli, si:em nu s’uleluxw, si:em nu imush netun mulstimuxw.
Entha pe’ Kwulasultun tu ni cun utl Snuneymuxw.
Huy ce:p qu kwuns ulup sqaqip u’tunu kweyul.
Please honoured friends, gather, the work is about to begin. I am grateful to be here with you.
*		 *		 *		 *
When I begin my introduction, I have been taught to first acknowledge my audience. O si:em, I am
honouring you. Siyeyu, shxwuweli, s’uleluxw, imush netun mulstimuxw. Friends, relatives, elders,
visitors. You acknowledge those in the audience and then move on to yourself.
Entha pe’ is how I introduce myself.
I am (most certainly)
Pe’ is a distinctly Snuneymuxw word, it is used in broader Hul’q’umi’num’ across dialects, but us
Snuneymuxw are known for adding pe’ after entha, which is I am. The use of pe’ to me speaks to a
sense of duty intrinsic to Snuneymuxw and our teachings as Snuneymuxw. It says to me that when
we speak we have a responsibility to our audience, to those whom we engage in dialogue with... that
within pe’ is contained the obligation to go above and beyond to do the best that we can to deliver
our message in a good way.
And so I come from these people and these places:
Entha pe’ Kwulasultun tu ni cun utl Snuneymuxw ‘i’ Hupacasat-h ‘i’ Penelakut ‘i’ England ‘i’ Ireland
‘i’ Scotland ‘i’ France ‘i’ Denmark ‘i’ Germany. Entha munu utl Ilse Hill ‘i’ Doug White, Kwulasultun, Tliishin. Entha ‘imuth utl Robyn Lancaster ‘i’ Lars Hill ‘i’ Joyce Hamilton, Salay’wi’ah ‘i’ Doug
White, Hun’cow’iyus. Entha scamuqw utl Yvonne Chomat ‘i’ Geoffrey Lancaster ‘i’ Joan Jensen ‘i’
Roy Hill ‘i’ Doris Hamilton ‘i’ Oscar Thomas ‘i’ Hilda Wesley, Kwustanulwut ‘i’ Charles Rice, Kwulasultun, ‘i’ Isabella Wyse ‘i’ George White. Entha thup’i’aqw Gertrude Alexander ‘i’ Henry Chomat
‘i’ Fanny Mason ‘i’ John Lancaster ‘i’ Emma Prevost ‘i’ Lauritz Jensen ‘i’ Elmina Comrie ‘i’ Mason Hill ‘i’ Lillian Haslam ‘i’ George Hamilton ‘i’ Sarah Thomas ‘i’ Louise Bob ‘i’ Albert Wesley,
Qwustenuxun, ‘i’ Mary Pielle, Xalanamut ‘i’ George Rice ‘i’ Jenny Peters, Tsatassaya ‘i’ Joe Wyse,
Tsuq’nustun ‘i’ Lucy Wilson ‘i’ Paul White.

Kwulasultun 2
I come from these people and places. The old people tell us to go back as far as we can. There is an
ancestor who goes back farther than the ancestors above who I would like to acknowledge. Xulqalustun from Penelakut. He is my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, the grandfather of my
great-grandmother’s grandmother, Mary Rice, Xalanamut.

Figure 01. Xulqalustun. Image from the Royal
BC Museum Archive without permission.

Figure 02. (Right) Mary Rice, Xalanamut.
Image from the Royal BC Museum Archive
without permission.

I do not recall meeting Xalanamut, my great-grandmother’s beloved Granny Rice. I am certain that
she was with me as I was carried from one world into another, and she will be with me again. It is
through her and her brother Tommy Pielle, Quyupulenuxw and all our relations of that generation
where many of the teachings I carry were passed down. My great-grandmother had the good fortunate of not attending the Kuper Island Residential School, instead she was raised in the old way by
these elders and taught about our history, stories, healing, and spirituality. It is important for me to
situate my teachings in terms of lineage. I feel that Xalanamut watched as the teachings were passed
down to me. My great-grandmother had a copy of this photo of her (Figure 02) and kept it next to
the grandfather clock in her living room. When I think about all the time I spent there listening as a
child, Xalanamut’s smiling face is always present. Just as Xalanamut was the beloved teacher of my
great-grandmother, so was Xulqalustun was to Xalanamut. It was during Xulqalustun’s lifetime that
first contact with Europeans took place in this part of the world, the east coast of Vancouver Island
(Cryer 55). Xulqalustun is seven generations back from myself. The whole span of colonization here
has taken place in its entirety from the beginning of Xulqalustun’s lifetime down to mine.

Kwulasultun 3
I am a Coast Salish artist and storyteller. My practice includes a range of mediums, primarily digital,
mixed media sculpture, painting, public art, installation, and a bit of performance. I work to honour
and celebrate the teachings and stories that have been passed down by my family, community, and
across shared Coast Salish cultures and world views. My visual art practice began only a few years
ago, but for as long as I can remember I have been a storyteller and writer. I see my visual art as an
extension of my storytelling. I am both Coast Salish and Nuu Chah Nulth, but at this point in my art
practice and my life, I have made the choice to focus on Coast Salish art.
My creative practices, and my life, are influenced by the enormous impact of my great-grandmother,
Dr. Ellen Rice White, Kwulasulwut and her life’s work. She was an amazing person. She worked
as an educator, a linguist, a healer, an activist, a storyteller and more. She was especially proud of
being a midwife and from the age of nine helped birth children. Her books of Coast Salish traditional
stories were read to me by my mother, Ilse Hill, all throughout my childhood. It was from her and my
mother that my desire to tell stories came from. In 2018, when she passed away, I realized how much
knowledge went with her. I realized how spoiled I had been, being able to sit with her whenever I
wanted, and how much more I had to do to be able to continue her work.
After her passing, I began to read everything I could get my hands on about Coast Salish culture,
ethnographic texts and academic documents, books of all kinds, I spoke to people in my family and
community about where I could learn and I started taking Hul’q’umi’num’ language classes. I use
Hul’q’umi’num’ throughout this document. It is significant to use our languages because, as writer
Alicia Elliott,from the Tuscarora Nation, says, “when you learn a people’s language, you learn their
culture. It tells you how they think of the world, how they experience it” (Elliott 10). It was from this
place of intense and desperate interest that my visual art practice emerged. Through my research, I
realized a couple things: First, if one wants to learn about who we are as Coast Salish peoples you
have to go to our forms of self expression, and our stories and art; Second, there are countless barriers
blocking access to our knowledge about ourselves.
I became obsessed with Coast Salish art. After months of studying Coast Salish stories and art forms,
despite no previous artistic inclinations, I felt compelled to doodle and draw. Through visual art I
found a new way to use my voice and to express myself; a powerful way to share what I had learned
both through this process of learning about my culture and over the course of my life, and this helped
with breaking down those barriers of access. The work done by Coast Salish artists such as Susan
Point, Charles Elliott, Simon Charlie, Stan Greene, and others to revitalize our art forms allowed me
to be able to learn in this way; without them it would not have been possible.
This document is an experimental s’yuth (“a true story/history”), bringing together Indigenous storytelling framework and methodologies with my own practice in order to respond to the quote from
Elder Bill White that, “Coast Salish art is to make the sacred visible.” My thesis art installation
accompanying this document includes mixed media sculpture, framed prints, and alternative form
poetic text set on the wall in vinyl decal. In this document I hope to situate my work theoretically and
create something that is creative non-fiction in nature, interweaving narrative, conversation, poetry,
prose, visual art, and other forms of storytelling that play with experimental typography and layout.
All of these come together to reflect, what is sacred to us collectively as Coast Salish peoples and to
me specifically as Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun as it relates to my lived experience and practice as
an artist. I want to note that it is impossible for me to address these questions wholly, and what I offer
here is an answer in small part.
*		 *		 *		 *

Kwulasultun 4

The Beginning - Our Creation Stories
I want to begin with our beginning(s).
In Snuneymuxw we have a multiplicity of creation stories. Our creation stories are not mutually
exclusive, rather I look at them as mutually inclusive; by which I mean that each creation story both
validates and is validated by the equally different and true creation stories of those around us, our
different families, communities, and relatives. If our relatives were not created here alongside us, we
would not be who we are and vice versa. In the same way, if it were not for the land we come from
we would not be who we are. The words of Potawatomi scholar, Robin Wall Kimmerer, come to
mind: “Creation stories offer a glimpse into the worldview of a people, of how they understand themselves, their place in the world, and the ideals to which they aspire.” (305)
Long ago in the time of creation, when animals were as people and Xeel’s wandered, we were
dropped down onto the earth and we emerged from the land.
At Te’tuxwtun (Grandmother of the Surrounding Mountains, Mt. Benson), Soc’a’thock and his sons
fell from the sky. He descended holding arrows and kneeling upon two slaves. On the mountain,
he perched upon a rock and sat looking in all four directions. He looked for other people. He knew
that they were there. Eventually, he saw smoke in the distance and sent his sons after it, down the
mountain and towards the water. The sons descended Te’tuxwtun, setting a path that would be followed by future generations for millenia. They ended up in Stlilup (Departure Bay) where they saw
the smoke coming from a house on the shore. An old man lived there with his daughters. The sons
of Soc’a’thock and the daughters married and became the progenitors of the tribes of Snuneymuxw
who lived in Stlilup. These four familial groups, Kwelsi’welh, Tuytuxun, Yishuxun, and ‘Unwinus
were among the six main familial groups of Snuneymuxw. In my great-great-great-grandfather, Albert
Wesley, Qwustenuxun’s words, Stlilup is the “real home” of the Snuneymuxw (Barnett 23). To my
knowledge, no Snuneymuxw lives in Departure Bay today, it is one of the most expensive residential
areas in Nanaimo.
Meanwhile, at Xwsaluxwul, near downtown Nanaimo, a man crawled out of a pile of grass. He was
all alone by the shore. He spent his days walking up and down the beach, looking for others. One day
he saw what appeared to be his reflection in a tidal pool, but when he bent down it was actually a person. He reached down into the water and pulled them out. It was the first woman. They became the
founding ancestors of the Xwsaluqun people, who were the fifth main group and spent their winters
where their ancestors were created instead of Stlilup.
Tle:ltxw (Rich Place) is the sixth group of Snuneymuxw, their village was where Brickyard Beach is
now on Gabriola Island at False Narrows. This was the site of the richest clam beds in our territory.
These are brief and rough retellings of stories that have been passed down for thousands of years.
They have been passed down through the sole act of retelling by Snuneymuxw voices, just as I have
now. I wanted to begin here because this is the truest beginning point available to me as a Snuneymuxw. These stories have been told by my ancestors, they have been told by my elders, and it becomes my duty to tell them so that they are there for future generations. For us as Coast Salish peoples stories are everything.

Kwulasultun 5
In this first telling of stories I want to bring up another important retelling of the Snuneymuxw creation. It came in the form of a totem pole carved by Snuneymuxw artist Wilkes James in approximately 1922.

Figure 03. “Sil-kar-malth” totem pole carved by Wilkes James. Gifted to the City of Nanaimo. Image from the Royal BC Museum Archive without permission. Although documents
exist depicting the entire pole, due to Coast Salish protocol, part of the image is not meant
for the general public and has been obscured in this document.

This totem pole, in the same way of the words on the last page, tells the story of Soc’a’thock and his
sons descending from the sky onto Te’tuxwtun, marrying into the family of the house by the water and
beginning what we now know today as Snuneymuxw. But there is a contradiction with this artwork.
Formally, it is a totem pole. The contradiction is that totem poles are not traditional in the Coast Salish world. Our ancestors did not make them, they were not part of our vocabulary. Instead, we carved
house posts which are not totem poles. The reason that totem poles came to be carved by Coast Salish
artists was the result of expectation by ignorant colonists and what they wanted to see from Coast
Salish artists.
A number of factors come into play here, including the tourism industry and the appeal of coming to
the Pacific Northwest. Totem poles became iconic imagery, but to see them in their proper context,
you had to travel a lot further than the central hub of Vancouver (Musqueam, Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh territories) or the capital in Victoria (Songhees, Esquimalt, and WSANEC territories). And not
only that, but also that Coast Salish art came to be seen as less than compared to the Formline artstyle
from nations to the North. The earliest instance of this viewpoint is illustrated in Franz Boas’ 1927

Kwulasultun 6

book “Primitive Art.” The 116 page chapter titled “The art of the Northwest coast of North America,” which is an adaptation of his 1897 essay “The Decorative Art of the Indiand of the North Pacific
Coast of America” is one of the first major academic investigations of Northwest Coast art. He examines primarily Haida, Tlingit, and ‘Kwakiutl’ (which refers to one band of the much larger Kwakwaka’wakw nation group and was misused in the past to refer to all of its nations) art, which came to be
known as “Formline” as coined by Bill Holm (Holm 2015 xxv). Towards the end of the chapter is a
subsection of four pages titled “Older art styles of the Gulf of Georgia,” wherein he describes Coast
Salish art. In doing so, he diminishes our art form in comparison to those of our northern relatives.
Boas refers to Coast Salish as an ancient and rough form, “in many cases the outlines are so crude
that the elements of composition are recognized with difficulty only,” (Boas 286) continuing his comparison “If we are right in assuming that the fullest development of a rich ornamentation in the north
is late, we might say that in the south the ornamentation has not yet encroached.” He then abruptly changes back to his conversation on the Kwakiutl and is quick to remind the reader that, for the
Kwakiutl, “the skill of the artist is not inferior to that found in the northern tribes.” (288)
From a Coast Salish perspective we have no concept of ‘art.’ Art as we know it is utilitarian and
functional. This is not to simplify it, rather it is profoundly complex. Contained within our art are
our stories, histories, our relationality to each other, to our territories, to our ancestors, to the cosmos.
Within our art is xe’xe’, the sacred. Our art served to facilitate the expression and transformation of
knowledge. The artists were not just artists, they were historians, they were knowledge keepers, they
were ritualists, they were healers. The artists were people working for the benefit of our communities.
Unfortunately, these facts were not of concern to colonial agendas.
Thus began an era of disrespect, erasure, and suppression of Coast Salish art forms. Wherein, in order
to survive and make a living as artists, our people had to make art that was not traditional to us, and
where access to Coast Salish art did not exist. Effectively, they dammed the river of Coast Salish art.
In exactly the same way that there was not space for Indigenous culture, for Indigenous joy, for Indigenous children to learn the ways of their ancestors in Canada, there was not space for Coast Salish
art. This history is but one microcosm of the overarching project of Indigenous genocide in so-called
“Canada.” It is imperative that you understand this in approaching this text.
My goal with this document is to outline as best I can, no matter how faintly it captures the whole,
what is sacred to me and to my culture as a Coast Salish person and what the project of Coast Salish
art is to myself and my contemporaries. I am driven to centre this project on Indigenous joy, but it is
inevitable that discussion of what has happened to us and those ugly elements of history must be spoken of, because if they are not spoken of, they will not be known. It is for that reason that I made sure
to note the mention of slavery in our creation myth. Slavery was widespread in Coast Salish history,
and it is a history that we carry with shame. We cannot pick and choose which parts of our history to
carry and pass down. We must carry all of it and choose to do better and grow with each generation.
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Kwulasultun 7

Figure 04. “We Fell From the Sky / Together and Apart” Eliot White-Hill,
Kwulasultun, 2021, mixed media on birch panel. Image courtesy of the artist.

My own telling.

Kwulasultun 8

Indigenous Storytelling Methodology
When I speak about Indigenous storytelling methodology, I mean to draw upon and engage in dialogue with the work of Jo-Ann Archibald, Q’um Q’um Xiiem’s system of Indigenous Storywork
(Archibald 2008). I refer first to the communities and nations that I come from, the Coast Salish and
Nuu Chah Nulth overarching nation groups and how stories play an integral role within our pedagogical systems. This is illustrated most clearly in my great-grandmother, Dr. Ellen Rice White, Kwulasulwut’s story, “The Boys Who Became a Killer Whale,” from her book, “Legends and Teachings of
Xeel’s the Creator” (2006) and her story, “The Raven and the Raccoon” from her book, “Kwulasulwut: Stories from the Coast Salish” (1981). These two stories explicitly express Coast Salish values
and what is considered ‘good’ behaviour or the ‘wrong’ way of doing things. In the killer whale story,
the importance of the education of children and the inclusion of children in the teachings is emphasized. For us, stories carry great meaning. The meaning grows and changes alongside of us and it can
be different for each of us, despite this ineffable and transformational nature, the meaning is always
there.
Q’um Q’um Xiiem’s approach to Indigenous stories is one that I embrace. These Indigenous storywork principles of respect, responsibility, reciprocity, reverence, holism, interrelatedness, and synergy guide us (Archibald 129). When I think about how we approach stories as Coast Salish peoples,
these principles can be seen as a way of practicing uy shqwaluwun (to be of good mind) as a listener,
reader, audience member, or story teller. These principles establish a pathway for how we should be
in relation to one another and what a good life can look like from a Coast Salish perspective. These
principles fundamentally uphold Indigenous systems of knowledge with their protocols and values.
This counters the history of anthropological study of Indigenous peoples, which sought to elide and
exploit them and their knowledges.
The teachings evolve and grow with us. In order to realize the teachings we internalize them. In Dr.
Robina Thomas, Qwul’sih’yah’maht’s PhD dissertation, “Protecting the Sacred Cycle: Indigenous
Women and Leadership,” she interviewed my great-grandmother about storytelling and teachings:
“[Kwulasulwut] told me, this is how teachings work; you must sit with them for three or
more months. Then, you make sense of the teachings and what they mean to you. Then,
they become your teachings.” (Thomas 67)
As indicated in the quote, we understand that in order to realize the teachings is to sit with them, to
introduce yourself to them, to come to know them. And from there, you must express them in your
own way. This is the motivation of my creative expression. I write my own stories and make my own
art and my snuw’uyulh (teachings) are contained within them. In a sense, this is a dialogue between
myself and my ancestors. My own understanding of the teachings may not be perfect, and though
I may not fully comprehend what it is that I am doing in the moment, I know it is of value and has
meaning. Through these practices the teachings become embodied knowledge.
An excerpt from “Indigenous Storywork,” comes to mind here, which cites my great-grandmother’s
teachings (this is in reference to walking in two worlds, with traditional knowledge and academic
knowledge):

Kwulasultun 9
“You could study the ancestors, but without a deep feeling of communication with them it
would be surface learning and surface talking. Once you have gone into yourself and have
learnt very deeply, appreciate it, and relate to it very well, everything will come very easily.... When your hands are both full with the knowledge of both sides, you’ll grow up to be
a great speaker, great organizer, great doer and a helper of your people” (Archibald 40)
When I first began learning about Coast Salish art, it was surface learning. I was just looking at it. I
was just introducing myself to it. The dialogue emerged when I began to share from within. This was
the energy of the teachings and the energy of myself coming together to make something new. From
that something new, the dialogue with my ancestors is enriched, the teachings are enriched. Through
the living and being and creation of ourselves and future generations, our culture breathes and grows
and transforms. This process will be ongoing throughout my life and the lives of all those alongside
me.

Figure 05. “Story Time,” digital design, Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun, 2020. Image courtesy of the artist.
This is an interpretation of how knowledge is passed down from generation to generation.

The methodology of storytelling is significant within a Coast Salish context because it is the way that
we communicate with one another, it is the way that we understand the world and the cosmos. Cherokee author Thomas King is quoting these thoughts in his book, “The Truth About Stories”:
“The truth about stories is that’s all we are. The Okanagan storyteller Jeannette Armstrong
tells us that ‘Through my language I understand I am being spoken to, I’m not the one
speaking. The words are coming from many tongues and mouths of Okanagan people an
the land around them I am a listener to the language’s stories, and when my words form I
am merely retelling the same stories in different patterns.’” (King 1)
In summary, I am holding up the teachings that have been shared with me and expressing them and
sharing them with others. What I share carries the meaning of what was passed down, but also carries
something new. The ‘something-new’ part is sacred to me, it is a part of me. I will work to describe it
in detail, please bear with me as I do.
In the next section I will outline my methodology for creative output, through a process of uy
shqwaluwun.
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Kwulasultun 10

Uy Shqwaluwun as Methodology
My methodology as an artist, as a storyteller, and as a xwulmuxw (human being) is contained within
the concept of uy shqwaluwun.
Uy Shqwaluwun (shqweluwun in Snuneymuxwqun) but the way my great-grandmother always said
it was shqwaluwun means to be of good mind, body, and spirit. These three facets of being are inextricably linked within shqwaluwun. To be of good mind is like a state of prayer or meditation, it is
something that must be maintained and attended to. It is to be present. It is to let negative thoughts
and feelings go. My great-grandmother spoke about how you must let the bad energy go, keep only
the good energy inside--the things that have happened to us in daily life or that are on our mind. You
speak to the world, to the materials you work with. You introduce yourself. You ask them for help.
You let them know what you are doing and how you will be doing it. This is a practice of opening
oneself up. It is a practice of being humble and trusting that the energies around you, of the land, the
universe, the ancestors, and all of life, will generously share with you.
I have held these teachings close to me. As I’ve worked more and more as an artist I have found myself working mostly in digital mediums. It can feel absurd at times, holding an iPad and Apple Pencil
in my hands and thinking about talking to the materials. I don’t even know what materials these are
made of or where they came from, or the energy that went into making them, the shqwaluwuns of
those people doing the making. My great-grandmother told me many times about how electronics are
blocking us off from being able to connect with the energy of the ancestors and the universe. Despite
that, I have found that it is still important, because even when we are not connecting fully with the
energies of the materials, or we have become closed off in certain ways, like water held in a hand, the
energies will always find ways to slip through. It becomes a sort of metaphysical act of connecting
with the source of the art and the source of the forms regardless of the materials and the processes. It
is the same as the source of our teachings.
In the early stages of my creative practice I was guided by the shapes and forms in Coast Salish art.
As someone who did not have confidence as an artist or in my artistic abilities, instead of worrying
about subject, I went to the shapes. The Circle, the Crescent, and the Trigon. These shapes have been
called different things by different people, but this is how I came to know them.
As opposed to worrying too much about a complete design, I devoted myself to the shapes that would
compose it. I introduced myself to them. I breathed them in and let them sit within me. I repetitively
doodled and drew from them. I came to understand what aspects of each shape I resonated with; how
these elements changed within their context and proximity to one another; how the proportions influence each other and how they are in dialogue. These shapes are their own beings and to honour them
I needed to let them breathe. These shapes reflect the moment in which they were made.
Somewhere around this time I found myself watching an episode of a docuseries produced by the
Japanese Broadcasting Corporation (the NHK) and hosted by Naoki Urasawa, a remarkable manga artist, titled “Manben.” The episode was an interview-slash-studio visit with artist Inio Asano
as he worked on his serialized manga, “Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction.” Asano is a
mixed-media artist who works primarily in digital illustration and in this episode shared some astute
tips within the field. One thing he said stuck with me; he spoke about how in digital art it is easy to

Kwulasultun 11
generate geometrically perfect shapes, shapes that are based upon mathematical formulas. To him,
these shapes do not have personality. Rather, he prefers shapes that are imperfect. Shapes that through
their imperfection reflect that they could only have been drawn by his hand (Urasawa 2014). To me,
Asano’s shapes emerged from a moment and are made in a way that honours that moment. This resonated strongly with the philosophy and aesthetic sense I was developing within my own Coast Salish
art style. Recently, Luke Marston, Ts’uts’umutl from Stz’uminus did the remarkable work of collaboratively finding names in our Hul’q’umi’num’ language for these shapes in his Master’s thesis:
Trigon: te’ulh (spearhead), Crescent: luwux (ribs), Circle: syel’kw (circle or oval). (Marston 9)

Figure 06. (From Right to Left) Circle, Crescent, and Trigon. Illustrations by Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun.

Today, with a few years’ experience of practicing art under my belt, I have acquired a more nuanced
understanding of how the Coast Salish shapes function. I now greatly enjoy looking at the shapes
within other Coast Salish artists’ designs. I find that it is within these shapes where the personality of
the artist comes through most clearly. These shapes, which are meant to honour the flow of energy
and movement in our designs, reflect that same flow conceptually within our own beings as artists in
the moment of making. Whether the shapes are drawn digitally or by hand, they are placed and curated thoughtfully and with care in Coast Salish art. They carry their energy and knowledge embedded
within them.
I think about how Coast Salish art was used traditionally. It was used in ceremony and ritual to help
facilitate the sacred. It was used similarly in every day objects to facilitate the work at hand, to help
bring the energy to the work and guide the work in a good way. For instance, the spindle whorls and
their carvings are art that helps the spinner maintain uy shqwaluwun, the art propels them further to
express, to build, to inhabit, to embody uy shqwaluwun. It helps them to open up their shqwaluwuns
as a corrollary, for the art has come from a state of uy shqwaluwun. My great-grandmother spoke
about how important it was for artists and people making things to practice this way of being. The
energy that we carry goes into the work and it has an impact on others, especially those using it.
When I am working as an artist and in my everyday life I try to practice uy shqwaluwun. I try to be
present. When I pay attention, I find that things come to me. They emerge from the field of this process. In being present to the knowledge and energies that have been opened up by this process, I find
myself influenced by the beings who are visiting me, the places I have been, the people I have been
with, and the stories that exist there. This is often where my ideas for designs come from. Living
outside of my territories for the first time has made me acutely aware of my connection to home and
place. When I am home in my territories in Snuneymuxw and Hupacasat-h I feel a strong connection
and familiarity with the land. I feel that I am seen and recognized. I feel the energies coming to me in
abundance.

Kwulasultun 12
There is energy here in Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh territories, and I am grateful to be
here, but it is a different kind of connection, and as a visitor here I must tread lightly. The energy of
this place and the stories here are not mine to share.
I had the good fortune of being invited to attend a workshop on public art hosted by the City of
Vancouver in November of 2022. It was full of more Coast Salish artists than I had ever seen in one
room, which filled me with uy shqwaluwun. Aaron Nelson Moody, Tawx’sin Yexwulla, or Splash, as
he is known, gave a beautiful presentation, which he has given before on numerous occasions. He
spoke about how to go about representing Coast Salish art, culture, and teachings in public art. He
said that it is important for us to not get too specific with subject matter and the stories we tell. He
said that when we get too specific we make things inaccessible for our audiences. By telling stories
in a more general way we can make the work accessible for the public. (Nelson-Moody 2022) As an
artist who has now worked in territories outside of my own, this is an invaluable teaching. When I
approach public art here in Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh territories, I do work that expresses in a more general way, stories and narratives about Coast Salish culture. I try to do work that
honours our hosts as a visitor here and that honours my relationship to this place as a guest.
When I am engaged in the process of making, uy shqwaluwun comes into play again. As I draw or
paint or sculpt, I listen. I make sure to take a pause, which I see as ‘letting the work breathe.’ In these
intermissions I think and try to listen to what the art is telling me to do. How do these lines look?
What forms are developing? Are the shapes in dialogue with each other? Is the proportion and flow
right? And above all, I try to allow spontaneous and intuitive energy to intervene. I might have one
idea coming into the work, and at the end it has transformed into a whole other narrative. Or maybe
more layers have unfolded within it. Sometimes there are aspects to pieces that I don’t come to see
or understand until much later, yet they were there the entire time. In the same way that Q’um Q’um
Xiiem said to approach Indigenous Storywork, I try to approach art, both as a maker and as an audience, with the seven principles of respect, responsibility, reciprocity, reverence, holism, interrelatedness, and synergy.
From the perspective of a graduate student conducting research towards a master’s thesis, I came
to understand uy shqwaluwun as a research methodology within an Indigenous research paradigm.
Shawn Wilson, an Opaskwayak Cree scholar, guides me with his text, “Research is Ceremony.”
Wilson says, “The purpose of any ceremony is to build stronger relationships or bridge the distance
between aspects of our cosmos and ourselves. The research that we do as Indigenous people is a
ceremony that allows us a raised level of consciousness and insight into our world” (Wilson 11). Uy
shqwaluwun is a ceremony, and through its process we as Coast Salish peoples are building, strengthening, and deepening our relationships with the cosmos and ourselves.
In the next section, I will further these connections between Coast Salish art and theory in relation to
Wilson’s writing as well as the work of Margaret Kovach.
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The Axiology of Coast Salish Art
A major interest of this thesis is axiological in nature. Axiology refers to a system of understanding
and assessing what is valuable. I will draw heavily from the work of the Indigenous scholars, Margaret Kovach (Nêhiyaw and Saulteaux), and Shawn Wilson (Opaskwayak Cree). These two writers
engage in dialogue with each other about axiology and how it applies within Indigenous research
methodologies. In my learning through them I came to realize that Coast Salish art itself is an axiological system.
Axiology and Epistemology are interrelated. Epistemology in a broad sense means what is knowable.
Axiology is classified as what is of value. I borrow from Plato here: The Form of the Good (‘big G
Good’ as my professors in undergrad would say) is the highest of values, it is the end unto and the
source of knowledge, ethics, and aesthetics, how we can and should be as human beings in nature and
the cosmos (Bloom 189). I think of my research question, “What is sacred?” as an axiological pursuit, thus, in axiological terms it means “What is of value?” and in following this line of thinking, one
can understand the quote, “Coast Salish art is to make the sacred visible,” expresses, “Coast Salish art
is to make the valuable visible.” Xe’xe’ (the sacred) is of the highest value.
The remarkable thing is that there is an entire system in place within Coast Salish art within which
one can look at the work and understand something important about our world views. The works that
exist are of value. What is of value about them? What can we learn through this approach? A deep
cultural context is critical to understand the answers to these questions, and this is why in this document I speak at length to Coast Salish culture. I find this pursuit invaluable.
Equally fascinating, and I think is a question that I alone cannot hope to answer independently: What
is of value to us as Coast Salish artists today? What does it mean for us to contribute to this collective
understanding? One must look at Coast Salish broadly art to understand the answers to these questions.
A critical point to do with axiology is the ethical element. In determining what is worth looking for,
we must think about how we go about acquiring knowledge. As Wilson says, “What is ethical to do
in order to gain this knowledge, and what will this knowledge be used for?” (Wilson 34). In relation
to Coast Salish art, we have a major duty of respect and responsibility when we work as artists. It
is like the responsibility that we carry every day as Coast Salish peoples, or as Indigenous peoples.
We come from a family, a community, a territory, a culture. We carry relational obligations to them
all. When I speak and use my voice, I represent myself first, but I also represent those from which
I came. The teachings from my family are to hold yourself well and to speak well, to live and act
in a good way, because you are responsible to those who depend on you and those who you exist in
relation to. When I speak in an academic framework or in public, as I am doing now, I do not claim
to speak for all of Snuneymuxw or all of Coast Salish people, because I simply cannot, however, I
do have responsibility to them when I speak. There is knowledge that is passed down in our families
and communities which is not meant for the public. I have a duty to respect the protocols around our
cultural teachings. The knowledge we carry is a gift and doesn’t belong to us, as such, we must act
with respect for it.

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As Coast Salish artists this responsibility is amplified. Coast Salish art is intrinsically linked to its
use within ceremony and ritual. There are major forms of our art which are not meant for the public. When we work, we must consider who our intended audience is, who are we working for? What
spaces will this art live in? How is this art informing the space? How is the space informing the art?
When you are uncertain, ask. Our elders and knowledge keepers are there for you. I think in the same
way becoming an artist is not dissimilar to becoming an Elder. One doesn’t simply age into being an
Elder. As my great-grandmother said, “to be an Elder you first have to be accepted, listened to, and
not laughed at. You have to be a good speaker… You always know where it’s [knowledge] going to
be in your memory, in your mind” (Archibald 37).
In the Hul’q’umi’num’ language there is no word for artist or art. Art was everywhere, it was part
of daily life. It facilitated daily life and ritual life. As my father, Douglas White III, Kwulasultun,
Tliishin, described in his chapter in “Native Art of the Northwest Coast,” that our art, stories, and
song played an integral role in facilitating the transformation of everyday space into ritual space
(Townsend-Gault et al 640). He further references our late uncle, George Clutesi, who described
the role of artists within the community, and how when leaders were unable to conclude regarding
a difficult decision, and all avenues had been exhausted, they brought in the artists. They brought in
artists because artists were able to “think profoundly and create forms with which to show the people
and thereby to stimulate, encourage, provoke and win over to ideas and principles where mere words
failed” (Clutesi 32). This is a teaching from my Nuu Chah Nulth side, on the opposite coast of our
island, but I think it relevant to include.
In reference to my own practice, I use the terms art and artist loosely. I do feel that what I do is art,
and I work as an artist within the contemporary context, but from a traditional standpoint I feel that
I am a learner. I am always learning and will continue to learn. It isn’t for me to decide when I’ve
gotten ‘there’ or where ‘there’ is.

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Revitalizing and Reclaiming Coast Salish Art
Coast Salish art is a unique art style among the Indigenous peoples of the Northwest Coast. For the
sake of simplicity, I will describe it in two streams. The first is weaving forms, which have emerged
from basket and blanket weaving. I am not experienced in these styles. In terms of my previous
description of the teachings, I consider myself to be at the point of surface-level introduction. It is
important for me to acknowledge that historically and even still, when Coast Salish art is dicussed,
weaving is often left out. This happens despite weaving being central to our art forms. My dad, Doug
White III, has always said to me that the weavers are the truest Coast Salish artists. In lieu of my
own account, I urge you to read and learn of and to look at and appreciate Coast Salish weaving and
weavers.
My knowledge and experience comes in the second stream, which I will call graphic Coast Salish art,
which has emerged from sculptural forms, wood or stone carving, and painted forms. Graphic Coast
Salish art is composed of three primary shapes which I have previously described. The crescent, the
trigon, and the circle (see Figure 06). In most cases, these shapes are contained within a figure. The
figure (animal/human/supernatural) can retain a firm reference to realistic proportion and form, or
it can be extremely abstracted. These figures are what I have come to know as a silhouette, and are
where I feel the artist has the most creative freedom within Coast Salish design. The shapes “populate” a design, so to speak. They represent the flow of movement in the design, and energy in the
body.

Figure 07. Even Bears Pray, Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun, 2019, block print.
For my aunty, Tsatassaya. Image courtesy of the artist.

Kwulasultun 16

Considering the importance of the Salish shapes and how they embody movement, it follows that the
designs in which they are composed value movement similarly. Sul’sul’tun, or spindle whorls are a
key example. Spindle whorls are one of the most frequent and celebrated instances of Coast Salish art
in the modern period. The intricate designs are often symmetrical in nature and sometimes reflect the
movement intended with their use. Of particular interest here, is that movement in Coast Salish art
(and in a more holistic cultural sense) is meant to go from right-to-left, or counterclockwise. This can
be seen as a general rule (not strict in that sense, but when you look for it you see this adhered to with
consistency) across various old works.

Figure 08. Quw’utsun Spindle whorl, stolen prior to 1903, carved wood,
collection of the Smithsonian Institute. Image used without permission.

This spindle whorl above, which was stolen from Quw’utsun and now can be found in the collections
of the Smithsonian Institute in America, is a beautiful representation of the movement of the overarching design following the movement of the spindlewhorl while the movement of the Salish shapes
within the body follows the flow of energy within the body. Like ripples on water they radiate out and
away from the focal point. Amazingly, the line of the spine is followed by the crescents but you can
also see a reverse trigon caressing the base of the palm in the arms (which is a common convention).
Not to mention that the tail ends in the mouth. What does all that say about the flow of energy?
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Kwulasultun 17

Here, I want to make space to honour the elders who began the work of waking up Coast Salish art.
It wasn’t until the 1970’s and 80’s that this work began, and it was carried and held up by individuals
like Susan Point, ʔəy̓xwatiyə (Musqueam), Stan Greene (Sto:lo), Charles Elliott, TEMOSEN (Tsartlip), Simon Charlie (Quw’utsun), and the Sparrow family (Musqueam) among many others. They
worked against a tide of racism, disrespect, erasure, and suppression. There was not a market or a
public interest in Coast Salish art when they started their careers. It is difficult to put into words the
significance of their work and the impact it has and will continue to have on current and future generations of Coast Salish peoples.
Susan Point recalls her experience in beginning her practice as a Coast Salish artist in her artist statement from “People Among the People”:
When I began, very little information or documentation could be found on the art style
of the Coast Salish people, due to early and extensive European contact in our territory.
Many of our traditional artifacts, such as houseposts and other utilitarian pieces created by my ancestors, were collected by eastern Canadian and European museums, or
destroyed because of their ceremonial significance in an attempt to assimilate our First
Nations Peoples. It was almost a lost art form.…At the same time, because I found so
little information on our Salish Peoples’ art and culture, and at first I did not yet truly
understand the unique significance of our art, I went beyond the traditions of my people
to develop my own art style. I re-designed and re-created traditional imagery in my own
“original” way, and developed a unique contemporary art style that created a movement. (Watt 7)
What Point talks about is the same experience which to varying degrees all of us as Coast Salish artists have had, the absence of access to knowledge and teachings about Coast Salish art. We all have
approached this barrier in different ways. What I find powerful here is how what Susan Point did is
so similar to the ways that my great-grandmother talked about the process of embodied learning. The
more that I have learned about Coast Salish culture and teachings, the more it has become apparent
that the art and our stories come to us in our own way. Our teachings are there to guide us to open
ourselves up and what we receive once we are open is unique to ourselves. That which we receive is
xe’xe’ (the sacred). We can share it with each other and enrich each other, but there isn’t a singular
‘perfect’ way or result; it is a plurality of voices, perspectives, and gifts which we have received.
For those in future generations of Coast Salish art, look at all the Coast Salish art you can. Examine
it. Ask questions. Think about the flow of the design. Think about how the art is used. Do not feel
constrained by materials and form. Embrace your own approach and the ideas that come to you, they
are your gift. They came to you for a reason.
To make the sacred visible is to honour yourself, your ancestors, the land, and the universe by responding to them with your own voice.
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Responding to Ancestral Forms

Figure 09. (Left) Healing, 2021, Eliot White-Hill,
Kwulasultun, digital. Commission for “In Plain
Sight” Report on Racism in BC Health Care.

Figure 10. (Right) 19th Century Coast Salish Spindlewhorl, carved wood, reportedly property of the De Menil Private Collection (does not appear in their online
collection). Image only accessible through the Burke
Museum website, used without permission.

The spindlewhorl in Figure 10 is, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful instances of Coast Salish
art to exist. The use of positive and negative space, especially playing with the spindle-hole as a negative face is genius. The legs of the thunderbirds on the side join the arms and shoulders of the human
figure below as one continuous form. The mouths of the human faces are pierced through the wood. I
can only imagine the spindle that went with this whorl was also immaculately carved.
My interpretation of this spindle whorl is that it tells a story about healing. The human figure in the
upper half of the design is “working” (this is how my great-grandmother referred to healing and
energy work) on the person below them. The healer is drawing upon the energy of the thunderbirds to
help with this process. This is how spirit helpers worked, and the thunderbird was amongst the most
powerful of them. I know that they are thunderbirds specifically because of the curving ‘plume’ that
arches back from the top of the head. This is how thunderbirds are depicted in Coast Salish style.
In my response to this work (Figure 09), I wanted to emphasize the healing taking place and the flow
of energy. I use flowing patterns of crescents and trigons to depict that flow. The healer is using their
energy to help bring healing ‘in’ (through the black crescents and trigon) and the thunderbirds are
helping to remove the bad and take it ‘out’ (through the ‘feather’ pattern of flowing trigons on the
wings).
The symmetry on my design (it is perfect, automated symmetry) and the asymmetry on the old work,
differs. Willie Good, Tsusqinuxun, helped me to understand this distinction.
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Kwulasultun 19

Willie Good, Ts’usqinuxun’: The Sacred is Asymmetrical
I recently had the good fortune of getting to spend time with my uncle, the master carver and Coast
Salish artist Willie Good, Ts’usqinuxun’ where he explained to me that the sacred is asymmetrical.
I use the name uncle in a more traditional sense, as we are not immediate family, but our families
are related. Going back generations, the White family and the Good family are the same. We come
from the village of ‘Unwinis in Snuneymuxw. During this time, Willie and I talked about art and
culture, as we don’t get to see each other often. Our conversations are brief but beautiful about who
we are as Snuneymuxw. He tells me about what it means to make Coast Salish art (he uses the phrase
Hul’q’umi’num’ art), which reminds me of how proud he is of the work I’m doing. I cherish our relationship. I didn’t complete a Research Ethics Board Review as I did not intend to interview in person
for this document, but this conversation happened and at the end he adamantly said: “You use what I
told you in the paper you’re writing.”
Willie Good is one of the artists in the first wave of the revitalization of Coast Salish art. He told me
about how in the 70’s there wasn’t the internet to research traditional art forms, there wasn’t Coast
Salish art in public. In order to learn about these subjects, he wrote to all the museums he could and
asked them to send him images of any Coast Salish objects they had. Most of the images from museum collections came through as black and white facsimiles, which filled filing cabinets. Through
intense study of these images he was able to learn and develop his own style.
Among other things, he learned that signatures exist within the old artworks. These “signatures” were
not a name spelled out in cursive, but rather a mark deliberately made in imperfection. He helped me
to see that in a design that appears to be symmetrical at a glance, where on either side of the mouth
there are crescents, on one side there might be two crescents and the other one; or if there are feathers in a flowing crescent and trigon pattern, there will be one missing or a break to the pattern on one
side. This intentional act demonstrates a rich and nuanced system of meaning within Coast Salish art,
that goes beyond what can be surmised at surface level.
There is a profound significance in breaking the symmetry of an artwork within an art style where
symmetry features prominently. Willie said to me that in the old way, it wasn’t meant to be perfectly symmetrical. You look at the human face for example, it isn’t perfectly symmetrical. Our eyes or
different features are often uneven. This is the way that things are meant to be. To make something
perfectly symmetrical was seen as bad luck. I think that it speaks also to a humility that is at the core
of Coast Salish culture. We are great not by virtue of individual attributes, properties, or any one
thing, but rather by how we are able to hold each other up, to give away and to look after each other.
In our art, it was about how it could fulfill its role and facilitate the work at hand as opposed to the
perfection of forms. The art does not exist in a vacuum, it is always relational.
From that conversation I learned that the sacred is asymmetrical.
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Kwulasultun 20

Figure 12. “Comb” (as titled by
the British Museum), collection of
the British Museum, stolen c. 1870,
carved bone. Image used without
permission.

Figure 11. “Raven Steals the Truth / A Prophecy and a Recollection,”
detail, Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun, public installation at Nanaimo
North Town Centre, 2022. Image permission of Jennifer Leigh.

As Willie described above, just as my great-grandmother described in her teachings, we internalize
the knowledge and teachings from the ancestors through listening, sitting with, and then responding.
Every Coast Salish artist has made work that responds to ancestral pieces. When we are learning
from the ancestral pieces, we are drawing from our own collective intellectual property as Coast Salish peoples. Our intellectual property is a collective understanding. It’s important to acknowledge that
Western intellectual rights are not the same as proprietary Indigenous laws. There are limitations and
exceptions, while we as Coast Salish peoples generally do not use crest systems or clan symbology
(Barnett 56), there are familial and national rights and prerogatives. These need to be respected.
The significance of my great-grandmother’s work in sharing her stories in book format was making
them accessible to all and especially to future generations. In following the path that she set, I give
whatever permission I can to future generations of Coast Salish artists to use and to learn from my art
and writing. I feel that all of us as contemporary Coast Salish artists today are contributing to a living
and evolving canon of Coast Salish art. Every new piece is inextricably linked to what came before
and becomes part of what shall next emerge.

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Kwulasultun 21

When I first arrived at Emily Carr, I was overwhelmed by possibility. I had very little technical experience as an artist and I knew that I wanted to address that deficiency as best I could. And so, I went
back to the basics. I did work that addressed the basics of Coast Salish art, the oldest works; those
being stone carvings and petroglyphs. I worked primarily in mediums that I had no experience with.

Figure 13. “Rebuilding, Coast Salish Style,” Eliot
White-Hill, Kwulasultun, 2021, plasticine clay,
wire, and painted panel. Image courtesy of the artist.

Figure 14. Salish Carved Stone Bowl, found near
Nanaimo. Image from the Royal BC Museum
Archives without permission.

I created a work, “Rebuilding, Coast Salish Style” in plastiline clay. I love clay as a medium. My
ancestors however did not use clay sculpturally, but the ways I have used clay resonates deeply with
our philosophies around art making. Here’s what I understand about the process of working with clay.
You have to wake the clay up through wedging, this is like introducing yourself to it. Engaging in
dialogue. When working the clay you have to be present. On the wheel when you centre the clay you
centre yourself (this is a quote my dad shared with me from his teacher, the late master potter Wayne
Ngan). You get into the rhythms... of the wheel, of the clay drying, of the cycle of processes from
start to finish. It is beautiful. And at every stage there is enormous opportunity for spontaneity, usually where the work breaks. You have to accept it and move on. Pottery was a great practice in learning
how a material speaks back for me in acceptance of what is. I wonder if this is how the ancestors
thought about working with stone.
With this work, “Rebuilding, Coast Salish Style” I wanted to speak to ancestral forms in a new medium, to interweave narrative and breathe new life into the work in a new way. The piece in Figure
13 references first, the carved stone head which was stolen in Snuneymuxw at some point in the early
20th century. It also references the work of Constantin Brancusi, a Romanian artist (an aesthetic
influence) who was one of the first abstract sculptors and the teacher of Isamu Noguchi, who I will
speak about later on. While drawing from these two sources, what also came to mind were recent
images of the head of Sir John A. McDonald lying on the ground, having been toppled by Indigenous
protestors in a profound moment of cultural and political reclamation.

Kwulasultun 22

Figure 15. Seated Human Figure Bowl, Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun,
2021, chicken wire, hemp rope, painted wood panel. Photo courtesy of
the artist.

Figure 16. Lot 4094. A FINE AND RARE
COAST SALISH STONE EFFIGY CARVING.
Bidding expected between US$ 30,000 - 50,000.
Native American and Pre-Columbian Art. 4 Jun
2007, 12:00 PDT. San Francisco. Image from
Bonhams Fine Art Auctioneers & Valuers without
permission.

After that work, I decided to do a larger scale sculptural work using chicken wire. As I worked with
the material, the idea for “Seated Human Figure Bowl” came to mind. I was compelled to make a
form that is meant to be a vessel but out of a totally porous and hollow material. The question “what
does it mean to be full?” filled my mind as I worked. As I was ‘finishing’ this piece, I felt that there
was something unresolved and so I ended up showing it in multiple different ways over the semester
(once as shown as in Figure 14, but with a projected video over it, and again covered in plastic sheeting). A working title I had for it was “It’s Coast Salish Because I Tell You It Is,” as a commentary on
working with contemporary materials and a lack of definition of what Coast Salish art encompasses. I
consider it to be a work in progress.
The old people described knowledge as a flow. Our snuw’uyulth (teachings) flow from one generation
to the next. In the old days the grandparents, the silu’, would take the grandchildren and raise them.
This was how my great-grandmother, Kwulasulwut, was raised. When it comes to the teachings and
Coast Salish tradition, we understand that traditions are meant to change. The teachings are meant
to evolve and grow. These systems and institutions of Coast Salish knowledge are meant to help us
to open ourselves up and be ready to live in this world and succeed. They are meant to guide us to a
place. Once we arrive there what comes to us is our own. Just as rivers do, the flow of these teachings
is meant to shift. It is meant to expand and contract and disperse and rejoin.

Kwulasultun 23

In returning to the core of Coast Salish forms in my work, I hoped to coalesce with the source and to
see what emerged from this confluence. I felt guided by the flow intuitively as I continued to work.
The spring semester of first year began with a presention on my great-grandma’s story “The Boys Who
Became a Killer Whale,” which addressed the subjects of Indigenous pedagogy and materiality (White
2008). Materiality from a Coast Salish perspective recognizes the Beingness of all things. The materials we work with have sovereignty, are conscious and sentient, and are not just “materials” but also
are Beings who can help or hinder us. Kwulasulwut’s story shows a process of “speaking to” materials
and asking for help; a way of opening a connection, relationship, and conversation with the materials
themselves.
As a Coast Salish artist, a dialogue with the materials requires us to approach the work with humility,
to recognize the agency of the materials in the art. My great-grandmother always said that we have to
speak to the materials we work with. Whether we are weaving, with cedar or wool, or working with
our hands, or in any context, we should speak to them; introduce ourselves; tell them what we are
doing; tell them what they will become; how they will be used; ask them for help in the work.
I try to keep this in mind in my work. Even when I work in digital mediums, with an iPad that is
composed of materials I can’t even begin to comprehend, I understand that I am in a relationship with
this machine, and I am learning its language even if I don’t understand the syntax. This brings me to
the teaching my great-grandmother shared about our prayer songs. She would assure me, if you feel
nervous and you don’t remember the words, then just hum. Don’t use words.
The ancestors and the land and the universe will understand you.

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At Emily Carr I have been interested in exploring my positionality in regards to what knowledge is
and to explore knowledge within the Coast Salish world view and ways of knowing. Knowledge, and
specifically Coast Salish knowledge within the Western context, has come to be seen as a resource
to be exploited. Knowledge is a subject I have explored in my work continuously. My practice has
emerged out of the loss of knowledge that took place when my great-grandmother passed away. It has
emerged out of a desire to know, as I sought to further understand who we are as Coast Salish peoples
and who I am. In all of my art making, I work to reflect and represent our knowledge.

Kwulasultun 24

Continuing to build upon the bodies of work I had developed prior at Emily Carr, responding to
ancestral forms and expressing the flow of knowledge, I designed the installation, “Uy Shqweluwun”
which was exhibited as part of the WinterArts Fest 2022. A series of inflatable light sculptures, referencing the “ancestor face” (a simple and almost featureless style of face) featured prominently. These
faces represented the ancestors sitting together and the traditional transfer of knowledge. This installation also included a mural and an augmented reality component, which I designed to further express
these themes, wherein the faces bob in the air and crescent patterns flow, expand, and contract, to
express how knowledge flows like water.

image placeholder

Figure 17. Uy Shqweluwun (To Be of Good Mind), Eliot White-Hill,
Kwulasultun, 2022. Public installation for VMF Winter Arts Fest.
Photo courtesy of the artist.

I have been drawing upon the metaphor of water. This is how the old people would speak about
knowledge. Knowledge is like the rivers we as peoples have depended on, which have sustained us.
In learning about our language, Hul’q’umi’num’, I saw how our languages exist and flow both metaphorically and actually in these same rivers. The language travels the same rivers that we do. Our
languages reflect our relations, our ways of life, our ways of knowing in place. This interrelatedness,
which I tie back to Jo-Ann Archibald’s principle, is the lifeblood of Snuneymuxw which flows along
the Fraser River as it does the Nanaimo River. As a Snuneymuxw I can tell so much about how the ancestors existed in the world because of the way that it is spoken in our languages. I can tell from our
dialect, Snuneymuxwqun, compared to the dialects from W̱ SÁNEĆ nations or Musqueam, that we are
more closely related to Musqueam. Our language Hul’q’umi’num’ is closer related to hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓
from Musqueam than to SENĆOŦEN from W̱SÁNEĆ. These movements and flows on bodies of
water and land are central to how we navigate the world. The interrelatedness of being and place is
central to who we are. To reference the anthropologist Wade Davis: “Language is not merely a body
of vocabulary or a set of grammatical rules. It is a flash of the human spirit, the means by which the
soul of each particular culture reaches into the material world. Every language is an old-growth forest
of the mind, a watershed of thought, an entire ecosystem of spiritual possibilities.” (Davis 2003)

Kwulasultun 25

These same flows, movements, exchanges, and confluences, take place within my body. Within the
flow of my blood...not by its quantum but by virtue that it is... within the flow of my breath, and the
flow of my mind.
The water and its sustenance, the blood in my body, each breath that I take, all the knowledge I am to
receive in this life, comes not by virtue of my own skills and abilities, but rather because of the energy of the universe, the land, the ancestors, that I am connected to. This concept, for me, emerges from
the Coast Salish understanding of relationality with fish and fishing, that “no Coast Salish person
ever presumed to have caught a fish by virtue of their own skills or abilities, but rather it was entirely
by the generosity of the (spirit of the) fish.” This came from a book (title unknown), that I happened
upon one day in my grandparents living room and read from cover to cover. I have never been able
to find it again despite searching high and low both at their house and in catalogues and databases
elsewhere. This teaching of the spirit of the fish has informed my process of art making and research
in combination with teachings from Kwulasulwut, my late great-grandmother. In thinking about the
teachings of the fish, I was inspired to wonder what teachings other beings have shared with us and
to look in what might be unusual places. In the case below, I went to the mosquito and asked through
my creative process what teachings they might have shared with us.

Figure 18. Qwe’en (Mosquito), Eliot White-Hill,
Kwulasultun, 2022, digital.

My great-grandmother would talk so often about our snuw’uyulh, our teachings, and how they were
there to guide us, to show us how we should be in this world and in relation with each other and with
everything. It was often about how to open oneself, and that once one is able to open themselves
they find that there is help everywhere around us. Q’um Q’um Xiiem’s writing on holism in “Indigenous Storywork” is a helpful to understand the concentric layers of relatedness and community that
surround us physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually (Archibald 11). When we open
ourselves up, we let these networks of community in. The act of opening is one of humbly asking the
energies of the universe. It is about preparing yourself and entering a space of being ready-to-receive.

Kwulasultun 26
The problem is that it is a complex endeavour to inculcate these teachings. The genocidal processes
and colonial systems governing the nation known as Canada, have worked very effectively to erase,
suppress, and deny the continuance of the flow of Coast Salish knowledge or Indigenous knowledges.
In another sense, hydroelectric dams were designed and placed to capitalize upon and disrupt the flow
of water, and now no salmon can spawn up and down the coast of the province and the water (what
little of it flows down from the diminishing snowmelt) is siphoned off to power the province and sit
in bottles bearing corporate brands.
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Figure 20. Beetle Pendant liberated from the cover of
the book, Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun, 2022, digital.

Figure 19. not a single Snuneymuxw person is named or referenced in this text, Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun, 2022, digital.

Visually, this ‘beetle pendant’ is one of my favourite instances of Coast Salish art to ever exist. It is so
unique and strange relative to most Coast Salish objects of this era. That it depicts an insect is incredibly unique. Our art historically was often used to depict beings who have been spiritual helpers to
individuals.
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Kwulasultun 27
kwulasultun syuth

Figure 21. Artifacts of a Modern Xwulmuxw, Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun, 2022. Pizza Box Cutout
Maquettes. Photo courtesy of the artist.

As part of my efforts to continue looking back to the oldest instances of Coast Salish art, I was drawn
to the “Senewelets” report, which documented and reported upon an archeological dig which took
place in Snuneymuxw on Gabriola Island from 1966 to 1967. The document was written and compiled by David V. Burley and published by the Royal BC Museum in 1988. In this document not a
single Snuneymuxw person’s name is mentioned and not a single Snuneymuxw voice is cited. I was
in disbelief as I read it. At this point in time, Snuneymuxw still had a whole generation of elders who
were fluent Hul’q’umi’num’ speakers and carried an incredible wealth of knowledge and teachings.
Their voices were not given a platform in the document as the anthropologist attempted to discern
the meaning of the artifacts that came from Snuneymuxw ancestors. What a lost opportunity, Shawn
Wilson would concur, saying, “We cannot remove ourselves from our world in order to examine it”
(Wilson 14). The absurdity of anthropologists attempting to evaluate and ascribe meaning to artifacts
where they had no understanding of the cultural context from which these artifacts emerged became
the foundation of this body of work. What emerged from that foundation was a series of cardboard
cut-out maquettes using pizza boxes.
The series, “Artifacts of a Modern Xwulmuxw” was inspired by the sculptural work of Isamu Noguchi, an artist I greatly admire. Noguchi was an abstract artist (1904-1988) who was a master of the
integration of space and sculpture, really that sculpture was not so much the singular artwork on a
pedestal, but more so the ways that people experience and interact in the space. Noguchi made several bodies of work that were both flat sheet metal and carved stone sculptures modeled after smaller
scale paper or cardboard maquettes. This philosophical approach to art and the experience of art,
the phenomenology of art, has been enormously interesting to me. While thinking about Noguchi, I
thought about how I wanted to explore the relationship of sculpture and space and decided to do so
through paper cutout sculptural maquettes. I see a parallel in the work he did with the work of my
ancestors, in how he engaged in dialogue with materials.

Kwulasultun 28

Figure 22. Isamu Noguchi, Mother and Child, 1944-45. Onyx. 19 3/8 x 12
3/4 x 8 5/8 in. (49.2 x 32.4 x 21.9 cm). Collection of The Isamu Noguchi
Foundation and Garden Museum, New York. The Noguchi Museum Archives, 00083. Photo: Kevin Noble. ©The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and
Garden Museum, New York / Artists Rights Society [ARS]

Figure 23. Meat Lover / Stqe:ye’ (Wolf),
Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun, 2022,
cutout pizza box sculpture. Photo couresy
of the artist.

Figure 24. Maquettes for marble slab sculptures set up in Isamu Noguchi’s MacDougal Alley Studio, 1946.
The Noguchi Museum Archives, 03185. Photo: Eliot Elisofon. ©The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, New York / Artists Rights Society [ARS]

At my supervisor, Mimi Gellman, Animkii’s suggestion, I explored architectural models and smallscale maquettes as a way to engage with a sense of scale and in order to develop a new skill to add to
my toolkit. As I developed the concept, I used a number of different materials for sculptural ‘sketches.’ I knew that I wanted to scale up from construction paper, and so I purchased large sheets of cardboard from Opus. When I got them, I don’t know what I expected, but I was really disappointed.

Kwulasultun 29
As I produced the large scale model using the laser cutter on campus I found that the sculpture was
totally lacking in spirit compared to the smaller ones I cut by hand. The perfect and even surface was
similarly spiritless. They were also expensive. It was just normal cardboard. It ended up sitting in my
studio for months. I thought about it more and through a conversation with my classmate Jenie Gao,
I realized how much cardboard I had sitting at home from random junk. That was when I had the
epiphany to use pizza boxes.
I had been eating a lot of pizza, as grad students do. The pizza boxes built up like a midden in the
corner of my kitchen. In teachings from my family, and from the uncles who I hunt with, we are
taught to use everything from what we take from the land; be it harvesting animals, plants, or other resources. Recycling and re-using these pizza boxes as art felt in line with this philosophy. And
when I started using the pizza boxes for these sculptures it felt as though new life was breathed into
the artwork. The pizza boxes were an artifact of my own life, they carried embodied knowledge.
Knowledge about capitalism, commodification, and fast food through the branded images they carry.
Knowledge about the ways that colonization and ongoing colonialism have impacted our diets as
Indigenous peoples and our abilities to access traditional foods and practice food sovereignty. While
the pizza boxes spoke to these issues, they were also objects that I had enjoyed greatly. I love pizza.
Since making these sculptures, I have learned that they are in dialogue with the work of Sámi artist
Joar Nango, whose notions of Indigenuity grapple with contemporary Indigenous notions of materiality, space, and architecture within the modern context (Pavka 2021).

Figure 25. Sketch cutout for paper maquette, Eliot
White-Hill, Kwulasultun, 2022. Photo courtesy of the
artist.

Figure 26. Untitled (the Picasso One), Eliot WhiteHill, Kwulasultun, 2022. Photo courtesy of the artist.

The maquettes I had been working with already were responding to forms used by abstract sculptors,
which for the most part (Noguchi being an exception as his work responds to forms from his Japanese heritage) had been appropriated from Indigenous peoples around the world by the artists. Artists
like Picasso and Giacometti, Brancusi who I mentioned earlier, were interested in abstraction. They
found abstraction in the art of Indigenous peoples. What this movement of artists sought so desperately existed already within art forms that we had been practicing for thousands of years. In creating
these sculptures, I took those forms back from them.

Kwulasultun 30
As I worked with the pizza boxes more and more, I came to understand the material better. I felt like I
started to move past surface learning and formed a connection with the materials. Aspects of the cardboard became integrated in my planning and sketching process. These qualities like the proportion of
the corrugation in the cardboard, the width of the flaps where the box was folded to add volume for
the pizza to be contained within stimulated the way things within my sculptural forms unfolded, in
the same way that Salish shapes inform the proportion of a design, these aspects of the pizza box also
informed my sculptures.
It amazed me, a crazy synchronicity occured, that a part of the pizza box pattern mimicked an old
spindle whorl which comes from Snuneymuxw, which has a pattern of hands coming together (Figure
26).

Figure 27. Hands, Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun, 2022, cutout Dominos pizza box. Image courtesy of the artist.

Figure 28. Snuneymuxw spindle whorl, collection of the
Royal BC Museum. Image from the Royal BC Museum
without permission.

Naturally, I had to incorporate this in my design. These are the kind of synergies that I listen for when
I work through being present, and as my great-grandmother taught me, when we are working in the
right way, they happen.

Figure 29. (Right) Embrace, (Left) Reaching for, Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun, 2022,
cardboard cutout maquettes. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Kwulasultun 31

Figure 30. A non-functional table, Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun, 2022, mixed media
maquette. Photo courtesy of the artist.

This became a very passionate and prolific period of making during my MFA. I covered the walls
of my studio with sketches. I thought about the basic forms and how they come together in space. I
thought about the materials and how they would impact the sculpture conceptually. This body of work
helped me to realize how important this way or working was to my practice and I intend to return to it
later and bring it new life in different ways. I feel as though, conceptually, these works are a well that
I can draw upon endlessly. This process felt right. Of all the work that I did during my MFA, this felt
the most realized and had the most potential. It felt like the truest expression of what I feel is our role
as Coast Salish artists, to retell stories in our own way and to make xe’xe’ and our snuw’uyulh visible.
For the final thesis installation, I have addressed the ways in which I feel the work in Figure 29 lacked
spirit.

Figure 31. Beetle, Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun, 2022,
cardboard maquette. Photo courtesy of the artist.

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Kwulasultun 32

Here I want to take pause.
Up to now this document has been written as a standard academic paper, in order to situate
the work and to ground the reader theoretically. The following section is more experimental
in form. The way that I write in this section represents in a truer way how language flows
in Hul’q’umi’num’, how our elders spoke slower and gave space for the weight and flow of
words.
I want to make space to acknowledge that the following section, “Knowledge Flows Like
a River” makes reference to Residential Schools. In writing these passages I can feel the
weight of this subject. I ask you to bear with me in this effort.
Please look after yourself and your shqwaluwuns (your being).
O si:em.

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Kwulasultun 33

Knowledge Flows Like a River
kw’ squlquluthun (a dream):
I had this dream some time ago, between my great-grandmothers’s passing and beginning to make
Coast Salish art:
I stood with my back to a rocky, moss-covered face of sandstone bluff, the kind you see on the
south face of Gabriola Island where it looks out towards the Rez. I was high in the air. The stone
beneath my feet was damp and slick. It was grey and foggy. I couldn’t see far out over the water,
which was impermeable and neither turbulent nor still. I found myself face to face with a great
serpent. It hovered, suspended in the air. It had a head at either end of its massive grey-green body.
I was speaking to one head, and the other head drifted some fifty feet further back, looking away
from me.
I want to talk to the other head, I pleaded with the serpent.
The head facing me stared and slowly shook.
You aren’t ready, the serpent said.
I struggled to come to terms with this answer
and the dream dissolved around me.
To be honest with you, I can’t recall whether this was a dream or that I dreamt it was a dream.
Anything further about this moment eludes me, I can’t recall how the faces of the si:nlhqi’ (two
headed serpent) looked. As it often is with dreams, I can only recall certain affects.
This dream came to me when I was in a desperate struggle to learn after my great-grandmother
had died. An intense urgency arose within me to learn what I could, so that no more would be
lost.
In retrospect, I think this dream came to me to remind me that things don’t work that way, that
knowledge isn’t a resource to be extracted, that all things are impermanent. What we learn and
experience, and the knowledge that we gain from it, are all gifts. They are gifts from the land,
from the ancestors, from the energies of the universe. They don’t belong to us.
Despite all of the horrendous and despicable histories of colonization in this place, the overarching reality remains; these energies and these beings exist outside of morality and outside of
human understanding. We should do all that we can to preserve ourselves and our teachings,
despite the fact that we can’t understand everything. This is a message against despair. I am
hopeful, because the knowledge was given to us once. When our ancestors are ready, it will be
given again. The knowledge still exists in the land. When we are ready, it will be there for us.
*		 *		 *		 *

Kwulasultun 34

knowledge

flows
like
a
river

lhuxw (to flow)
means also a baby’s first
words to come out
words spilling from lips
babbling along tongues
from one generation
to the next
in the shape
of our ancestors

Kwulasultun 35

a shape, not a static form
meant to change gradually
in gradations, in bursts
in a warped door

in nan’s cookie cutters,
long smushed by pans

the river bed rolls
and slithers
and sheds
its skin
shivering
shimmering
the new skin glistens
different but the same

kwulasulwut syuth
*

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As a girl
My great grandmother, Kwulasulwut
Was sent to sit
Beneath the floorboards
Beneath the open window
Beneath the “place of learning”
To learn, to wait
What drips of knowledge
Slipped through the cracks
Did they know?
What happened within those walls?
160+ tear drops
Dripped through those cracks
And into the land

knowledge flows
despite
a hydroelectric dam
funneling, siphoning
indigenous knowledge
so as to power
colonial structures
on stolen land.

Kwulasultun 36

how must it feel
torn from bed
*

fed through pipe
over, under, and along

*

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*

If you can’t go to their school
you’ll go to our school,
declared Granny Rice,

where forests stood

and she, along with her only brother Tommy Pielle,
Quyupulenuxw, and the other elders from the community took my great-grandma and her thirteen
cousins and taught them in the old way.

ash and concrete dust
whispering songs to each other
in the night

and in that moment,
the tide, having receded
leaving damp sand

to bake in the sun

and crabs and mollusks

to huddle in their dens

half buried in sand
returned again

for one more generation.
*

*

*

*

Education is sacred in our world
Which is one layer to how purely sickening and insidious,
genocide dressed up in a school uniform was.
*

*

*

*

“They’re bullshitting us,” said one of her cousins, Ernie,
as a young boy about the elders’ teachings, “that’s too
crazy”
about the capacity of our people,
to connect with energy,
the land, the universe,
each other.

They weren’t.

Kwulasultun 37
*

*

*

*

My great-grandmother, Dr. Ellen Rice White, Kwulasulwut, spent much of her later life looking for
someone who could “find the English words” for her stories. It felt as though, just as I became readyto-receive and ready to ask questions, she was leaving us. I realized how spoiled I have been, being
able to sit with her whenever I wanted. She was one of those people where it felt impossible to me
that she would leave. When she passed it felt that the light went out. But only in the darkness are the
stars visible.
With my great-grandmother’s stories, there is always something there for me. I feel that when I read
and re-read her stories, I am getting one more chance to sit with her. Her words speak through time
to me in the moment. There are new teachings that have revealed themselves to me in that moment,
meant for me as I am now. The gifts of these stories are not static, the snuw’uyulh are living things
that come to you as you grow and change, as you need them. Our ancestors, their teachings, their
words, they are never really “gone.” They live with us in many ways
*

*

*

*

kwulasultun syuth
sometimes it feels that my art practice has emerged from grief.
personally, the grief of losing my Big Mama
collectively, the grief of everything
grief is a Coast Salish institution

This notion of passing is not the same as ours.

we have professional mourners

The ancestors are always with us, all around us,
all.

we have so much protocol and process
for losing loved ones
and i came to realize
grief is gratitude
my practice has emerged from a place of gratitude
i cun ci’t (here and now/i am/to be grateful) ) ) )
				
((((
				
))))
				
((((

When we learn to open ourselves to them,
They are there for us.

Kwulasultun 38
*

*

*

*

the children decided to use materials
that had already been spoken to
these materials were already awake,
in a way
they were ready to listen
they were happy
to hear the children’s voices.
they were happy
to change,
to help;
but not the materials that had not been spoken to,
had not been handled with care and concern by those trained
were they still happy
how can we tell
did they murmur joyfully
in their sleep?

*

*

*

*

Kwulasultun 39

I think one way to describe the realm that the ancestors live in would be that this is a similar, if not
the same state, in which all things exist. The rocks in the ground, the water, the weed sprouting
through the cement, the fly flitting about, and, somehow, the wood laminate table you sit at; they are
all sentient beings. They can communicate with us. But not in the sense of
“Hey, how are ya,
how’s the family,
pretty tragic
what’s going on in the world right now
isn’t it?”
Rather it’s more of a connection in the energy plane. My great-grandmother would talk about the
thought-before-the-thought, which seems to me to be the energy and pure intent prior to the act. This
place of thought-prior-to-thought is where the communication takes place—though this is the best
I can approximate as someone who has not received the training. Perhaps once you are trained and
open to this other realm, conversation in a conventional way is possible. Sitting there as a child listening to the stories that my great-grandmother told, it was apparent to me that she existed in an entirely different reality to my own, or perhaps we existed at an intersection between worlds but I was
only able to look one way down the street, whereas she was able to look side to side, up and down,
and see the life teeming in the ditch just off the road. She was the other head of the si:nlhqi’ and I
was stuck looking at myself, but we were the same being; of the same body. Her lived experience
was so at odds with the laws of nature that Western science had established (maybe not physics, as I
suspect that quantum theorists are starting to catch up to where our ancestors got millennia ago). How
am I supposed to navigate these inconsistencies, the incongruous and tenuous veneer of the reality
that I supposed myself to exist in? I chose simply to believe.
I think of that story she loved to tell about her cousin, a young boy and one of those she was taught
alongside in the old way. One day he said to her after teachings about the spiritual and energy side of
their work,
“I think those old people are full of shit, you know,”
and she’d laugh. They weren’t.
(this section was written at a Denny’s at Burrard and Broadway, on stolen
Squamish land nearby the Senakw village site, April 6th 2022)
*

*

*

*

Kwulasultun 40
*

*

*
*

What does it mean to speak to the materials?
How can I speak to materials that have been processed
in ways so far from the teachings?

Wood from trees that I never knew, felled
en masse
hauled to places I have never been,
along roads I have never walked
ground into a pulp,
into a form where the only discernible
feature is the smell,
but the smell is enough for the Ancestors,
mashed and mushed and pressed,
and contorted many times more, treated
and cured,
travelling different places for each step
and delivered to my door, as a vessel
for food I did not make, from beings I did
not know,
from hands I have never felt,
How can I speak to these materials that have
not been

What has happened to the energy of those
beings
deconstructed and reconstructed
what form does it now take
in such a monstrous house
when I look to it
does it look back
does it see
does it feel
does it remember
I claim them as artifacts of my own life,
but on what basis do I claim relationship
with those I have not spoken

Kwulasultun 41
*

*
*

*

xwiyune:m ch (listen)

suwqstamu tu nanum u’ tu kwulasun
(for the stars to speak)

*

*
*
*

Kwulasultun 42

It feels that all my artwork
emerges from a moment.
It feels that all my artwork emerges from a moment. It feels that all
my artwork emerges from a moment.
All my artwork across all
forms and media; perhaps,
ultimately, every form of
expression I have ever released
into the world. How it looks
and the form it takes isn’t so
significant as everything prior
to the act that culminated in it.

Is it an echo or a response or an impression
or a gesture of that moment?
Is it a reflection of that moment and who I
was in that moment and in that context?
Is it its own thing distinct and separate from
all of that?

And I can puzzle and ruminate and ramble endlessly as to
the nature of that and that moment, but it has fled.
And yet, here I am, left with a gift of that moment. An artifact
of that moment.
*

*

here and now I am grateful. i cun ci’t

*

*

Kwulasultun 43

Conclusion
In this thesis I have examined Coast Salish art and my process of becoming an artist, and from a
causal perspective, my own process of becoming. The mediums I have used are those dearest to me,
the gifts I have received from Kwulasulwut, my great-grandmother, my family, my community, my
culture, the land, and the universe, whether in essay format, prose, or visual art. The act of telling
stories has given my life meaning. These relations, what I have received through them, each moment
of being and being-with, these are all sacred. The sacred is not meant to have a definitive outline. It is
everything around us, everything about who we are and our experience here. It is the coming together of different energies to make what is new. This is the way that my great-grandmother spoke of it
to me, and I have tried to express how it was said to me in the best way I can, through new and old
stories.
There is a lot to unpack in this thesis. This thesis is an Indigenous story, and the key to unpacking it
is described in Jo-Ann Archibald, Q’um Q’um Xiiem’s concept of Indigenous Storywork. You as a
reader have shared your time with me generously to make it to this point. I ask that you engage with
the teachings I have shared both now and on an ongoing basis using the seven principles of respect,
responsibility, reciprocity, reverence, holism, interrelatedness, and synergy, and that you continue to
engage with Indigenous art and stories with uy shqwaluwun.
I have situated Coast Salish art and my own practice as a Coast Salish artist in theory and philosophy.
These are fields where Coast Salish art has not often been discussed in the modern context, and they
are fields which can enrich our art and our understanding of our art. Our ancestors were theorists and
philosophers in our own way. As we continue the process of revitalizing and reclaiming our art, we
continue to learn more about who we are, and we expand our shared identities.
It is critical that I acknowledge that the revitalization of Coast Salish art is an ongoing process, the
aspects that I have described are only a small part of the work and from one perspective. There are
multiple generations of Coast Salish artists working alongside me, each of us contributing in profound ways to this sacred work. My writing has been geared towards equipping the reader to be able
to understand when they look at and how to look at our art, to help fill their basket with knowledge.
For future generations of Coast Salish artists and all Coast Salish peoples, I hope that they see themselves reflected when they look. I feel strongly that a connection is formed between the art or story
and the audience who experiences it, and that that connection is a place where empathy and understanding can flourish. This connection is a sacred space. It changes and grows as we learn. These
connections are invaluable to carry within ourselves.
The work that we do as Indigenous artists in the modern context is affirmative of our cultures, our
identities, and our lived experience. The fundamental act of us telling these stories is sacred. Our
voices matter, our stories are worth sharing. We enrich everyone around us in doing so. I can only go
to the work that Susan Point, ʔəy̓xwatiyə, Stan Greene, Charles Elliott, TEMOSEN, Simon Charlie,
and others did to illustrate the incredible impact that we can have. Our world is richer because of
what they have shared. Our relations and connections as Coast Salish and non-Coast Salish peoples

Kwulasultun 44

are richer and deeper and full of more understanding and compassion because of the work that they
did.
When I first set out to pursue an MFA, I saw it as an opportunity for two things, first; to do the work
to talk about and honour Coast Salish art in a way that can be shared with others; and second; to better myself as a person and to develop my skills as an artist so that I can better serve my community
and the future generations to come. Learning is not an easy path, but it is profoundly rewarding. I do
not see what I began and have done here as finished. This is one step on a journey I shall be continuing for the rest of my life. There will be more and other instances and variations of this work. The
art that I have made at Emily Carr is reflective of these processes, they are reflective of the various
stages of learning I am at as an artist. These artworks are meant to honour that, and they are meant to
honour those who walked alongside me here.
Everything that I have done here has been in honour of my late great-grandmother, Dr. Ellen Rice
White, Kwulasulwut. She left us so much, the more I sit with what she left and the more I try to learn
from her, the more that emerges. I hope that I have been able to share her teachings and to honour her
in a good way with uy shqwaluwun. I hope that she feels proud on the other side.
I feel so excited to continue as an artist. I am grateful to have the opportunity to do this work. There
are concepts and ideas and forms that I have only begun to touch on. I want to bring them to realization in many different ways. I want to continue to grapple with and engage with materials and senses
of scale. I want to continue to engage in dialogue with my ancestors. I want to keep learning so that I
can share more.
Huy ch qu si:em, thank you honoured ones, for walking this path with me.
It is time that we adjourn for this moment. On my Nuu Chah Nulth side we would say, “Chuu.” Chuu
is functionally both a greeting and a farewell, but what it really does is it opens and closes a conversation. When we meet again the conversation will be reopened. This conversation is a connection
shared between us that exists across lifetimes and realities. On my Coast Salish side we are a little bit
more direct. We say, huye wulh si:em (leave already, honoured one).
O si:em,
ni hay, huy ch qu (the work is now done / the end, thank you)

*

*

*

*

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