Robes of Power
The button blanket is eye-catching, prestigious and treasured -- one of the most spectacular embellishments to the Indian culture of the Northwest Coast and a unique form of graphic and narrative art. The traditional crest-style robe is the sister of the totem pole and, like the pole, proclaims hereditary rights, obligations and powers. Unlike the pole, about which countless books and papers have been written, the button blanket has had no chroniclers.
This is not only the first major publication to focus on button blankets but also the first oral history about them and their place in the culture of the Northwest Coast. Those interviewed include speakers from six of the seven major Northwest Coast Indian groups. Elders, designers, blanket makers, and historians, each has a voice, but all do not conform to any one theory about the ceremonial robe. Rather, the book is a search for the truth about the historical and contemporary role and traditions of the blanket, as those relate to the past and present Indian way of life on the Pacific Northwest Coast.
A badly needed contribution to the study and understanding of Northwest Coast art and art history ... Timely and of fundamental importance in assisting native art to become thoroughly established as an Art and not simply to be seen as idle curios which are shuffled off to the halls of anthropology and ethnology.
Dedication
Foreword
Preface
Requests
Responses: The Blanket Makers' Stories
Dempsey Bob -- Roy Henry Vickers -- Carole Helin -- Norman Tait -- Margaret Heit -- Fanny Smith -- Robert Davidson -- Freda Diesing -- Hazel Simeon -- Carrie Weir -- Francis Williams -- Dora Cook -- Simon Dick -- Marion Hunt Doig -- Shirley Hunt Ford -- Tony Hunt -- David Gladstone -- Joe David -- Ron Hamilton
Recollections of Historians
Agnes Cranmer -- Martha Brown -- Florence Davidson -- David Gunanoot -- Moses Ingram -- Flossie Lambly -- James Sewid -- Albert Tait
Contributed Articles
Sculpting on cloth / Dorothy Grant
Haida button blankets / Freda Diesing
Kwagiutl ceremonial blankets / Daisy Sewid Smith
Button blankets on the west coast? / Ron Hamilton
Button-blanket designing, Gitksan style / Vernon Stephens
Gitksan ceremonial robes / The Book Builders of Ksan
The significance of colour among the Kwagiutl / Martine J. Reid
Results
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Photographic Credits
