Town Hall Seattle Arts & Culture Series

Examples of Northwest Coast art appear in museums and collections throughout our region, but what does it mean when there is no word for “art” in the language of the people who created it? How might the Indigenous definition of art be far more expansive — demonstrating rich kinship connections and manifesting spiritual power — than a non-Indigenous framework? For anyone who regularly engages with art, these are compelling questions of accountability and cultural respect. In Unsettling Native Art Histories on the Northwest Coast, coeditors Kathryn Bunn-Marcuse and Aldona Jonaitis considered how Northwest Coast art is inseparable from its communities, demonstrating kinship connections, manifesting spiritual power, and far beyond. Together with over a dozen other contributors, the book brings Indigenous understandings of art to the foreground, recognizing its rich context and historical erasure within the discipline of art history. Aiming to “unsettle” Northwest Coast art studies, the collection of essays center