| Submitted by: Mark R. Leeper United States |
| Submission Date: 14 February 2005 |
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That is just across the street from our hotel. In the early morning there were runners along the path, people walking dogs, a few people sleeping on the beach, and some geese pecking up breakfast from the grass. There were barges and tankers anchored in the bay and smaller boats moving around. There is a small but nice beach. I guess it was something of a luxury having this beach. The sand was trucked in. There was no naturally occurring sand here. I told Evelyn that it must be valuable. We had been hearing at work about how the computer industry is suffering a silicon shortage. That must mean the world now has a shortage of sand, right? Anyway I misspoke myself and called it silicone. Now that's a scary though. Think of all the ghoulish treasure hunters digging up the graves of all those Hollywood starlets.
The whole shoreline is dotted with park benches. Each (but one that we saw) has a plaque. Most are in memory of someone. Evelyn suspects that many are AIDS victims and that Vancouver may be a city with a high gay population, another similarity to San Francisco. Anyway the plaques all say something like 'You came, you saw, you made us laugh.' That one is on the bench of a man who died at 22, if I remember. I wonder what is the metaphysical foundation for the belief that you can get a message to the dead by leaving it on a plaque on a bench? Is the belief that the dead reside within the bench? If so I do not envy them their view of the living. Is that what being dead is like? You are either bored with no company or you are looking up at an unflattering angle at your loved ones? Jeez. I'd rather be... OH MY GOSH!
Well one intelligent thing they have on the beach is to have a rule against playing radios. I have heard people over the last couple of days playing Walkmans so loud that it was disturbing. Well earlier this year I had my vengeance. I won't go into the circumstances, but I was driving down El Camino Real in Palo Alto in a rented convertible. Only the third or fourth time I was in a convertible at least with the top down. And the radio was playing Puccini's TOSCA. And I said why is it always such lousy music I get blasted with by others. So I turned the radio to full blast and let the world hear Puccini. There is definitely an attraction. Anyway this is a nice beach in the early morning.
We returned to the room and I took a shower. I left out my night-case token. Actually it is the handle of a chopstick labeled 'Night-case.' I leave it so it sticks out of my night-case. When I put the night-case in the bathroom I leave it out in plain sight somewhere in the main room. It reminds me not to leave the case.
We ate in a place called The Bread Garden. I was expecting a lot of rolls with seeds. I mean considering the name of the restaurant. Evelyn had a Pain du Chocolate and a Latte. I had a shrimp wrap which turned out to be noodles, spinach, and a few pieces of shrimp in thin wrap.
We are eating outside on a wobbly marble table. Why are restaurant tables so often wobbly? Does your dinner table at home wobble? I am watching the woman across from me. She is an older woman sitting and drinking coffee and smoking while she talks to a friend. She throws her cigaret down on the tiled floor and steps on it, lighting up her next. Why do smokers consider that cigaret butts are not really litter. This is a woman who does not look like someone who breaks rules. She does not look very punk. We just have come to accept this form of despoiling the environment.
Someone who sees us typing into our palmtops comes over to make conversation just asking about them. I guess he at one point ran a computer store so knows what PCs are all about. He asks a lot about what accessories you can get with a palmtop. He also gives helpful information about how to get to our boat. People seem a lot less reserved here than in the US. They talk to strangers.
At about 9:30 our new bus passes kick in. They are only good after the morning commute is over. We take he bus to The Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. This is a long ride on the bus and then a long walk on the campus. We get there about 10:55am. We are just about in time for the 11am tour. There are maybe six or eight people on the museum tour. The woman sometimes has a many as 50 people she says. I don't know how she manages because her voice is barely strong enough for the six of us to hear. It is not helped by the design of the museum, concrete walls that bounce back every sound in the room and there are little kids running around and treating the museum like a playground.
This museum is supposed to be a general museum of anthropology. But at least 90% is devoted to what they call 'First Nations,' a new name for what we call 'American Indians.' Actually I am told by Evelyn that based on a survey in the US, the majority of First Nations peoples prefer to be called 'American Indians.'
Most of this collection was collected around 1926 and the museum itself was built in 1976 of a simple concrete design. That was the design that was playing havoc with the acoustics.
Off to one side they have a ceramics collection that seems more art than anthropology. Probably the central area of focus is the totem poles. The totems were so common in this area because the land was rich so the local tribes did not have to be nomadic. That meant they could take the time to decorate. The making of totem pole is not just an art of the past, but an on-going one. Only someone important like a chief will have a totem pole. Some people think that totem poles tell a story, they don't. And the poles are not idols that were worshipped. Actually they are closer to heraldry than hieroglyphics. There will be incidents and tales connected with the family's past that will be represented on a pole. There will be totems from he wife's family and from the husband's family. Each animal on a totem pole will in some way belong to the family's background. Each image has songs and stories associated with it. Also there might be multiple somethings at the top to show how many potlatches the family has given. One showed three watchmen to symbolize three potlatches given. I will describe potlatch later. I wonder if totem poles had to be updated if more potlatches were given. Maybe it was a good excuse to opt out of giving another potlatch.
Much of the information about what the symbolism is has been lost since European diseases wiped out about 90% of the First Nations population. Knowledge would be wiped out when everyone who knew it would die out. It is much like during the plague years whole villages would go out of existence when everybody died of the plague.
Poles come in two types. The half poles that are decoration for the front of a building. A cross section of the pole itself would be a D-shape made from a split log. Then there are the free-standing ones that use the full circle.
Now a Potlatch should be familiar to anyone who has ever been to a Bar Mitzvah. A potlatch is nothing more than a big celebration party (16 hours long, no less) at which every attendee is given a nice gift. It is a show of wealth that a family can afford to have a potlatch. Inviting a whole tribe and perhaps a neighboring one to potlatch would break someone who was not very wealthy. It was a way to spread the wealth. Family's would often start three years in advance to get all the gifts together. The Euros that came tried to suppress the potlatch because the locals enjoyed the custom and it took too much time from being Christian. Also it was claimed to spread disease, but you can bet they didn't think church gatherings spread disease. But in general the Christians liked to compare their customs to those of the locals and then ascribe the differences as being either immoral or unhealthy. The attitude was that if the First Nations people really worked at perfecting themselves they would end being just like the Europeans.
I assume that the participants would stockpile gifts so they would be ready for any event that comes. And they do it like 'let's make 200 all-purpose gifts. Somebody will want them.' And what is the best all purpose gift but a bentwood cedar box? These were favorite possessions. The cedar started as straight planks. They would then cut three ridges and heated and steamed the wood so it would bend. With the three bends they had the sides of the box. The loose ends were sewn or pegged together. Then a base was pegged in place. The result was a box you could carry water in, use as a cradle, just about anything. It was sort of Tupperware.
On exhibit was wood and metal work. The metal work had an interesting story. The people of the First Nations would trap animals for pelts which they would sell for silver coins. They would then beat the coins into jewelry. Now I am sure the Euros did not pay the First Nations people well for pelts. A lot of animals must have died for very little jewelry. But we people of non-First-Nations descent now know it was a good thing the First Nations were doing, living in harmony with nature and painting with the colors of the wind.
One of the temporary exhibits was a piece by local artists saying that art done on First Nations themes should be sold only by people of the First Nations. The museum, by giving a forum to this point of view and none of any opposing point of view seemed to be sanctioning it.
There has been a disturbing trend in museums of late. At one point museums were just institutions to share experiences and facts. That was considered to be their sole function. Over the last few years I have noted more and more museums where the feeling is that they can present opinions as fact. Now I suppose that Relativity is in some ways an opinion, but there is scientific evidence that it is a correct opinion and the scientific community strongly believe in Relativity. But the presenting of political viewpoints seems to go beyond the bounds of what a politically funded museum should be doing. A couple of years ago the Smithsonian wanted to set up an exhibit about the bombing of Hiroshima (a good choice for an exhibit) and present it as a purely reprehensible act. If they want to present it as still controversial 50 years later, that is fact. If they want to take sides in the controversy, either side, that is not what they are being paid for. To use a position as a public teacher paid by taxes. To push a single point of view is an abuse of trust. I don't care if they do agree with my politics. I don't want them to use public money to teach even my politics as fact.
I cannot really put myself in the place of the First Nations wanting to restrict their themes to themselves. There has never been much demand for Judaica outside the Jewish community. Well, that is not quite true. There was a strong demand for Jewish art in Europe in the 1930s. That, however, can be ascribed to bargain hunters rushing to take advantage of low or frequently non-existent prices. But I don't think much of this art was displayed at the time and more frequently it was melted for the materials.
There were also examples of weaving roots and the centerpiece of the museum was a piece of artwork by local Bill Reid showing a creation myth. Reid is continuing the traditions of his ancestors by creating art on traditional themes and selling it to museums. He also does not want non-First-Nation people telling traditional First Nation stories, so our guide could not tell us the story of this creation myth, but did point us to a sign on the wall where Reid told in his own words the creation myth story.
'The great flood, which had covered the earth for so long, had at last receded and the sand of Rose Spit (Haida Gwaii) lay dry. Raven walked along the sand, eyes and ears alert for any unusual sight or sound to break the monotony. A flash of white caught his eye, and there, right at his feet, half buried in the sand, was a gigantic clamshell. He looked more closely and saw that the shell was full of little creatures cowering in terror in his enormous shadow. He leaned his great head close and, with his smooth trickster's tongue, coaxed and cajoled and coerced them to come and play in his wonderful new shiny world. |
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| Copyright © - "Mark R. Leeper" |
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