Inside a dimly lit room at the Burke Museum in Seattle, blue, red and purple braids of wool are displayed next to the materials used to dye them: berries, alder cones and red mushrooms. The room also holds delicate older Coast Salish garments and vibrant new work, including a shawl and small bag created by artist Kelly Sullivan, who used a weaving technique called overspun.
“When you take it off the loom, it's like the spirit comes to life for the weaving,” she said, describing the technique. It involves twisting the wool tight enough that it does not require a knot to hold it together, which also makes the material more durable.
The material sort of dances around and comes to life. Sullivan said it's her favorite part of the weaving process: “When you do those little twists, it's almost like you can see it. Like, it’s transforming."
The exhibition "Woven in Wool: Resilience in Coast Salish Weaving" features new pieces like Sullivan's alongside 30 loans of historic robes, capes and regalia from museums in Canada and across the country, some dating back to the 1800s. The Smithsonian loaned the museum a pelt from a woolly dog, a now-extinct breed that were kept by Coast Salish peoples for their hair. The pelt, which belonged to a dog named Mutton, is the only known specimen in existence.
The Burke Museum exhibition is open until August.
Tribal officials used some of the older pieces when they met with dignitaries. Other pieces were used in ceremonies or, more practically, to keep people warm.
Contemporary weavers studied these pieces to make new work. For Sullivan, the exhibition is a way to preserve the practice and share it with others.
"I hope in 100 years, someone's learning from this dress and this shawl and this bag, and they're trying to figure out how I did it, just like I wonder how they did that," Sullivan said, pointing to a nearby cape from the 1800s.
The museum worked on the exhibition for years with the Coast Salish Wool Weaving Center, a nonprofit with five locations on tribal land in Washington State. The weaving center promotes and teaches traditional wool weaving techniques.
The museum paid for the weavers to study older pieces at other museums and select what they wanted to feature at this show.
"All the decisions were vetted and made by them,” Katie Bunn-Marcuse, curator of Northwest Native American Art at the Burke Museum, said. “The vision was really led by them."
The weaving process starts outside, where weavers spend months gathering material, such as foraging for mushrooms at a specific time of year, when they’re the right color. Susan Pavel is on the weaving center's board.
"What we wanted to also lift up was process, and all that it took to bring a robe of protection or a dress for a ceremony or leggings for protection to life," she said. "It's many, many steps to get there."
The artform is a part of Indigenous culture that has survived systematic efforts to assimilate Native peoples through methods such as boarding schools.
Pavel, who is Filipina, married into the Skokomish Tribe. The late Skokomish artist Bruce Miller taught her how to weave in 1996, when Pavel was in her late 20s and working on a doctorate degree in education from Washington State University.
“I could tell that I was living what I would say, like, the ‘letter B life,’ meaning I was really pretty darn good at a lot of things,” she said.
At the time, Pavel wanted to be extraordinary at one thing in life — she wanted to live an “A life.” Pavel felt Miller, who she calls uncle, could see that as well.
“He poured into me all these teachings, and he just kept doing it,” Pavel said.
Back then, Miller taught people who “showed up” what he knew. He was one of only two Native weavers in the state. When Miller passed the skillset to Pavel, she wanted to return the favor to others.
"I feel like uncle reached into my soul and lightly just tapped there, and ever so slightly pulled out this silver strand and laid it out in front of me. And there's this silver strand that I walk upon," she said. "Sometimes I stop, and sometimes I fall down, and sometimes I've been pushed off. And it's not always been easy."
Pavel kept with it and dedicated herself to be the “strongest link in the chain of knowledge.” Pavel said the art form isn’t meant to stop with her. She's developed the Coast Salish Wool Weaving certificate at Evergreen College and said she plans to teach more weavers for as long as she can. She sees Indigenous culture being revitalized in other ways, too.
"We know pieces of our knowledge have been woven back together again, because I can see the young ones who are growing up in our longhouses, who are singing our songs and dancing our dances and in our ceremonies, and it's normal for them," she said.
