History of Northwest Coast Native Art
Northwest coast native art styles are associated with several major nations or native cultural groups on the Pacific Northwest coast from pre-European contact times to the present.
Major cultural groups include Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, Nuxalk, Kwakwaka’wakw, Nuu-chah-nulth and Coast Salish. For thousands of years, these cultural groups lived as hunter gatherers along the BC coast.
Each Northwest coast native cultural group has its own art style which is directly related to its mythology, ceremonies and cosmology.
Northwest coast First Nations communities express their cultural traditions through artistic designs of nature, humans, and animals such as eagles and ravens, as well as creatures depicted in native legends.
Traditionally, Northwest coast designs are found on paddles, ladles, baskets, hats, headdresses, robes, canoes, jewellery,
totem poles, medicine bowls, bentwood boxes, sculptures, and masks.
These art forms depict mythic and ancestral beings and display the strong relationship that exists between humans and the natural world. Before contact with Europeans, First Nations people of the Northwest coast lived abundantly off the land. Their songs, stories, dance and affiliated art depicted the strong interconnection with the sea, rivers and forests of the Northwest coast.
Northwest Coast native art production increased with European trade in the late 18th century. Oppression of Northwest coast native practices, most notably the potlatch, in the late 19th century led to a significant reduction in the production of native art.
Traditional Northwest coast art techniques and practices were for the most part lost by the end of the 19th century. At this time, traditional art objects such as masks and totem poles were taken by museums or sold to private collectors.