Digital Exhibition and Media Reviews

U'mista Cultural Society . The Website of the U'mista Cultural Society , Alert Bay , British Columbia , Canada . The website that is the domain of the U'mista Cultural Society on the Internet opens with a fleeting glance at the façade of its physical home which faces the beach in the unique and famous (at least among anthropologists) village of Alert Bay, British Columbia.1 This surface is painted in traditional manner with conventionalized crest art representing Thunderbird and Whale, linking it with practices, both historical and contemporary, for the display of chiefly prerogative. Alert Bay on Cormorant Island in British Columbia is famous among those of specialized interest because it was the home village of Kwakwaka'wakw Chief Dan Cranmer who, together with other family members, hosted a potlatch on Village Island in 1921 that was considered illegal by the Canadian government and resulted in the arrest of some participants and the subsequent seizure of their potlatch regalia. Just as famous and influential were the efforts of cultural activists in the 1970s to repatriate these confiscated treasures and to return them to two facilities that came to function as both museums and unique cultural centers—the U'mista Cultural Centre in Alert Bay and the Kwagiulth Museum on Quadra Island. James Clifford wrote about the course of events briefly summarized here and raised provocative questions about the nature of display in this context as it compares with other institutions in the Northwest Coast region. Referring to the first director of the U'mista Cultural Centre, anthropologist Gloria Cranmer Webster, he pointed out that: “[t]he fact that Dan Cranmer's potlatch is highlighted in a museum directed by his daughter cannot be politically neutral.”2 Nor, it can be said, is the reiteration of this story and its elaboration for contemporary audiences in electronic territory without political significance, particularly as a statement of domain (the aptly borrowed term for the common address of networked computers). The website of the U'mista Cultural Society is conceived and positioned in cyber-territory to maintain ownership of key information about history and art by Kwakwaka'wakw participants in this project on their own behalf. Like the U'mista Cultural Centre itself, the website is built around the story of the repatriated objects, now called the Potlatch Collection. By the click of a mouse, one may proceed from a small installation view of the collection to images of individual masks and other potlatch paraphernalia, along with voluminous notes on the use of these items, legendary histories associated with them, and some information about provenance. This is where the website can provide an experience beyond that of the physical Cultural Centre itself where vast amounts of text about what might seem recondite subject matter to the average visitor would be quite out of place. For example, a grouping of three broken coppers is accompanied by several pages of dense text that describe transactions carried out with these objects. “Coppers” are metal plaques used in potlatch context for prestigious display, the enactment of intense rivalries, and as devices that recall for “those in the know,” the histories of important families who have owned them. One passage reads as follows: “He puts an ‘advance’ (down payment) on it [a Copper], (may do right then or later on). When the time for the husband to call people together, he calls his people and the buyer knows he must collect his loans and pay for the copper. He says to the seller of the copper, “I will give you $500 advance, so you must pay me $1,000.00” (seller has loaned out to his own people, so he doesn't have to give advances)? Then goes ahead with the buying of the copper, this may take a whole day, or even two, to buy the copper.” In some cases, the texts also include the names of the proper Kwakwaka'wakw owners of these objects. All this may be fascinating to some visitors to the website, but it can be skipped by those who have no interest in it. The site also includes information about dance performances given by the local T'sasala Group for visitors during the summer months. Descriptions of the dances that visitors might see are given in the “first person plural.” For example, a description of the Am'lala Play Song “Grease Trail” reads: “To celebrate the completion of special events, we have play songs that are fun and less serious … We invite you to come and participate, to symbolically walk to the other side of the world, the west coast of Vancouver Island.” A statement of ownership is surely embedded here, a qualified invitation to enter this foreign territory. A similar assertion of authority is included in the form of the now well-known wall text at the U'mista Centre about the creation stories of the different Kwakwaka'wakw tribes. The observations of Haida artist Bill Reid are quoted in relation to current scientific thought on the population of the New World by Mongolian nomads who crossed a land bridge and became known as “American Indians.” Reid suggested, “There is, it can be said, some scanty evidence to support the myth of the land bridge. But there is enormous wealth of proof to confirm that the other truths are all valid.” The legendary histories provided on the website, as they are on the walls of the U'mista Centre itself, are presented as “some of the truths” that Reid wished to introduce. Territories are claimed on the World Wide Web just as they are in the landscape of the physical world. On the web, words and images support these claims, rather than guns or even legislation. On the U'mista Cultural Society's website, claims of ownership are made in text with supporting images, both in relation to information as well as to prestigious histories. The site is effective in this manner. Today, however, the web and other electronic media are the most powerful tools for those who demonstrate the greatest command of new technologies. The images and ideas on this site are forceful, but they are a bit static. The theatrical genius of the Kwawaka'wakw has yet to affect the mode of presentation here. For that matter, the most impressive electronic representations on the web rarely originate in native territory. This is the next challenge, to maintain authority in virtual worlds through greater mastery of the media by innovative native artists, especially for display to younger viewers who may be more attracted to the dramatic representations of native life invented by technological wizards of nonnative origin. Some young people are accustomed to operating in animated virtual worlds that offer them a great many opportunities to own and construct complex personae in elaborate environments. They might not stay long enough to work their way through all of the static windows on the U'mista site.3 One may argue that art historians and anthropologists will love the site (and they will), but they were won over long ago. To a great extent, no virtual visit to Alert Bay will do. Nothing will substitute for the sound and the smell of the sea beyond that façade nor for the aroma of the cedar chips left behind by living carvers who have strong opinions and much to say for themselves. Most viewers of the website will not know anything about this, but much important information can be conveyed to them. Before long, the outstanding accomplishments of the generation that built the U'mista Centre will undoubtedly be embroidered, upheld, and augmented by the accomplishments of their children and grandchildren as they navigate electronic worlds as a matter of course. They have received an impressive legacy and must now take up the work that lies ahead of them. Judith Ostrowitz has taught art history at Columbia University and Yale University. She is the author of Interventions: Native American Art for Far-Flung Territories (University of Washington Press, 2008), Privileging the Past: Reconstructing History in Northwest Coast Art (University of Washington Press, 1999), and (with Ralph T. Coe and J. C. H. King) Ralph T. Coe and the Collecting of American Indian Art (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2003).

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