Threads That Bind: The Story of the Pacific Northwest Woolly Dog

- The master plan from colonialism, as I'm sure you know, and people are more aware of now was to take the Indian out of the Indian.

Yet I think we held on by a string, I like to use that metaphor, because I am a weaver, and my string is connected to my history and my ancestors.

- It's amazing when you think about it.

I think it's miraculous, you know, when I think about the things that our people went through, disease, residential school, legislative poverty, we weren't even allowed to leave the reserve without a pass that was signed by somebody to say, "Oh, yeah, okay, you can go to the store", you know?

And that was just my father's generation, you know?

So we think about these things that all those ancestors went through, and we're still carrying what they brought for us.

- I come from a long line of weavers, a long line of doctors, healers.

In my lineage, there was a man who they called the War Chief Kitsap.

He was a War Chief who helped in the Indian wars All of them banded together to fight for our land, and fight for the right to live our life as we were as Native Americans, or as Indigenous People, as people say nowadays.

- Well, I was born at the Sumass Indian Reserve.

I was eight-years-old when the missionaries found me, and I was taken to residential school.

We were told we had to change, we couldn't carry anything that belonged to the past, because we had to become Christian.

They said we were heathens and savages, we had to leave all that behind, and so obediently we did everything we could to forget the things we were taught by our elders.

And then, of course, each year when I went back, elders were dying, you know, the next generation of people were already following the new ways.

we were not allowed to keep our identity.

We were not allowed to weave, or to speak our language, or to pass anything on to the future generations.

All these things were taken away.

(water rushing) (Indigenous singing) In order for me to carry on with the education of who I am, I was taken out away from the village, out to an old longhouse by the river, and that's where I learned to do all these things that I wasn't supposed to learn.

(Xweliqwiya Rena laughing) - A lot of things perished because of colonialism.

A lot of knowledge passed.

When Europeans arrived Upwards of 90% of the people perished, right?

From diseases brought by Europeans, so a lot of knowledge was lost, a lot of society was lost.

One of the casualties of colonialism was the woolly dog.

My great-great grandmother, my mom's grandmother had her own dogs, they made the blankets from the woolly dog, and they raised the woolly dog, they kept them in in house.

- The smaller woolly dog, smaller in stature, looked more like a Pomeranian bred for the ideal longer hair that was preferably white, the whiter the wool, the more valued.

- It was the woolly dog and the goat hair that made up the blankets.

- Blankets were very important, because in the wintertime, they didn't have all kinds of clothing, like what we have nowadays.

Everyone had to have a blanket.

And so blankets were very important.

It was always a tradition to go up where the goats would brush off their wool, and they'd go, and with their baskets, they'd pick up as much of the loose wool on the bushes, because not everyone had dogs, you know, even the ones with the dogs, they would mix them with the goat hair, and so blankets were very, very important.

I don't know how they would live without them.

(Xweliqwiya Rena laughing) - The Coast Salish I think would be defined by the fact that they share a lot of culture together, they share a lot of language together, and the Coast Salish territory, the Coast Salish People would come from Seattle, all the way up to Vancouver here, and then all the way up into the Interior.

- So we are here today on Ye'yumnuts, and Ye'yumnuts is a traditional village of the Quw'uts'un Mustimuhw.

This village area was inhabited from about 8,000 to about 3,000 years ago, and obviously, the elders were so smart, because they moved specifically not the house dog or the hunting dog, but the woolly dog onto islands, so that their genetics would not actually be ruined through interbreeding.

That leads me to like believe that, you know, they were acknowledging that there is a genetic alteration there, and that through the act of cross breeding, we can alter a species.

- These dogs were maintained only for one purpose, and it was to create the hair and the wool to make blankets or garments.

These dogs were maintained just for that purpose, and were sheared so that they could make garments, blankets.

On a daily basis, we would engage with these dogs.

On a daily basis, we would be thankful for the dogs, thanking the creator for these dogs.

Um, when we would shave them or some pluck them, we would pray for them before we did that.

And then when we, when we have t from them and, and we're gonna s would do another prayer for that You actually talk to the wooly dog mountain goat wool when you' spinning it, and you say, um, "You're gonna have a new life.

Um, you have a new purpose.

We're gonna spin you, and you're going to become something else - By the time my grandmother started carrying on with the wool weaving in secret, the dogs were all gone, because that was part of what we weren't allowed to have, you know?

(water rushing) (Indigenous singing) - Our governance practices and our cultural spiritual practices were outlawed.

And so our blankets, our robes of power and protection and honor and nobility were a part of that, so people started to transition to other forms of fiber work, which included spinning sheep's wool instead of our traditional mountain goat wool, and Coast Salish woolly dog wool - Coast Salish wool weaving was replaced by knitting, because the sisters of the mission school taught the Coast Salish girls to spin and weave wool, and so it was just faster.

- A lot of the knowledge around making the blankets was actually secret, was passed down from one generation to the next.

My mom was involved in that, she's one of the few people that had continued doing the weaving since her grandparents were alive, and was still doing the weaving the way that she was taught it.

- My grandmother, she taught me how to spin with the spindle whirl when I was just a little girl.

Weaving is a part of our identity, it's part of who we are as a people, without our weaving, we're just people without a background, or history without identity.

And so weaving, to me, is very important.

It tells the world who we are.

(gentle music) - I think it does something for you when you're weaving, it's like a good process to ground you, and to help you with anxiety, and help you with different things that are going on in your mind, and you're just focusing on this, and you actually end up with something that you've done, it gives you a lot of self-pride, right?

So that's pretty cool.

(Xwe li qwel tel Stephen laughing) - It just seems to bring everything back into focus, it's like when you're weaving, and you feel good after you've finished the blanket, and it's just really, I guess, it is a way of healing, - I was lost in western society.

I didn't get to grow up in a cultural life, drumming, singing, weaving, all of that.

I grew up in what I would call an unhealthy lifestyle.

(water rushing) (gentle music) And in 1994, I went to treatment, and admitted my faults, all that stuff, and it just so happened, they had a lecture one day called "Indian Identity."

And that's where I lost it, because I didn't have one, I didn't have an Indian identity, I really didn't know I was Indian until I was in the fifth grade, even though my last name is White Eagle.

That day is when I made the decision that I was gonna learn anything and everything I could about my culture and my hereditary rights.

From that point, I started weaving baskets.

It rooted me in who I was as a Muckleshoot person, as an Indigenous person.

(gentle music) - You know, growing up, I did a lot of living, and balance back and forth between, you know, worlds that I lived in, and just on search for, not really even aware that I was on search, but I was, and you know, I had to stop in the part of my life and say, "You know what?

This is enough.

This is enough."

Like on one of my really crazy nights, I might've been walking home, talking to the stars, and saying, "You know, is this all there is?"

And so I started questioning myself a lot, and thought to myself, "What am I gonna do now?"

And I feel like I have a calling to it, it is who I am, it is my passion and my responsibility to bring back into this world this beautiful history and knowledge of our people that's been so wrongly, wrongly done for the last 200 years.

- Don't work at the loom if you're angry, If anything is heavy on your mind, you don't want to leave it on the loom, on the blanket, because you leave bad spirit behind.

So you must always be happy, have a good mind, and feel good about yourself when you're at the loom.

I suppose that's why it's healing.

(Xweliqwiya Rena laughing) But when you make a blanket, it's part of you.

And when you give that blanket to someone, you're giving yourself, part of yourself.

And the the person that's receiving it understands this.

- That robe is woven for you to protect you from any negative energy that somebody might feel towards you, or negative energy that just might be in the air, in the house, in the longhouse.

This weaving was woven with prayers and love to protect you from all of that.

So all you're feeling is the love and energy of the weaver.

You're opening up the portal for the ancestors to come and be with you, to come and be with everybody who's there.

(gentle music) (water rushing) - There was a village at Ozette that Makah People lived in up until the first part of the 20th century, 21st century, actually.

We know that there was a big mudslide there.

This mudslide was probably triggered by an earthquake, and the mud came down at about 65 miles an hour and covered several houses in the village, the artifacts and the wall planks stayed buried for several centuries until 1970, our tribe started an excavation that recovered 55,000 objects, so we have a wonderful opportunity to learn about our material past, we have loom parts, we have roller bars, and upright looms.

We have a dog hair blanket that we have on display.

It's folded up, it's too fragile to unfold, some of the weaving is just incredibly beautiful, it would've taken certainly a lot of time to make these very finely woven blankets made out of dog hair mixed with other fibers, and over the years, they've approved some research on the collection, some specifically relating to the dog bones that were excavated at the site, and they've also allowed some researchers to look very closely at the dog hair blankets to see what other fibers are mixed in.

- It's taken me 29 years to get to a point where I get to feel comfortable and confident with myself to walk into a museum, and talk with people from Western society.

I wanna see these things, they belong to our people, they belong to my grandchildren, they belong to their great-great grandchildren.

- Looking at the blanket downstairs, I was just amazed, if not in shock.

(Chepximiya Janice laughing) I've never seen anything like that.

The warp was so finely spun, and it was so finely woven, and the loft of it was really different.

(gentle music) When I see the work of the ancestors, it's so touching for me, and I still feel that energy.

And I invite people to also feel that energy.

You know, it's opening up your heart, and opening up your mind to understand what that means.

And if you understand that it goes back for us so many hundreds of years, that's how long we've been doing this, and that's what it's always meant, and people look at a weaving in a case, or something, you know, it's alive.

(cart whirring) (gentle music) - We think in 1858, George Gibbs acquired this dog, which he named Mutton, and we believe based on analysis of the specimen that Mutton lived with him for most of the dog's life.

But Mutton died late in 1859, and at that time, they prepared him as a specimen.

- I got involved about 15 years ago when I was taking a Master's certificate in spinning, like hand spinning, and I had to do a research project, so I picked Coast Salish spinning, because I lived in Coast Salish territory, and I knew there was some unique techniques, and tools, and fibers that were used.

I heard that they had spun the dog hair, the woolly dog hair to make yarns.

And then I heard that the Coast Salish woolly dog was at the Smithsonian.

So I got to look at Mutton, Ever since I've been studying the woolly dog and Coast Salish textiles.

A few years later, there was an article in "Hakai Magazine", and it mentioned the dog hair blanket at the Burke.

- I had found out in that article that the only known woolly dog pelt, named Mutton, was actually in Smithsonian collections.

And so immediately I was wondering if anybody had done any research on his DNA, It was really clear how important, how significant these dogs are culturally to the Coast Salish.

I thought that it would be right if Coast Salish communities were involved in some capacity, or at the very least, made aware of this, the possibility of this kind of research, and also to gauge whether or not they would be interested at all, and if so, what can we do to proceed with this research in an ethical manner.

- One of the things we do at the Smithsonian is we can work with DNA from ancient long-deceased organisms.

In this case, we got really fortunate that we found pretty well-preserved DNA in Mutton.

We're able to recover several hundred million little fragments of it, and then we can compare it with thousands of other dogs worldwide that are from the past and from the present.

we were kind of just trying to learn whatever we could about what makes this dog, this dog.

So one of the things that we could do is look at genes that look like they're uniquely different from all other dogs, and all other wolves and coyotes.

- We had found out through analyzing Mutton's mitochondrial genome and comparing his mitochondrial genome to almost 200 modern and ancient dogs from around the world that Mutton is a pre-colonial dog.

We estimate that his specific lineage is between 1,800 to 4,800-years-old, which aligns really nicely with what is known about the archeology of domestic dogs in the region.

- What it did was affirm the Salish ideas about the origins of these dogs.

Some of the sort of early academics had speculated that these things couldn't possibly be, and these weaving traditions couldn't have possibly developed here.

Essentially, these were examples of scientific racism, and sure enough, what we could do is validate that, you know, these dogs are North American Native dogs.

They look like they came from this area.

(water rushing) (gentle music) - What I like is science is studying these things, and you know, these are things that we've always said, and I like the way science is catching up.

You know, that's nice.

- To me, it's so fascinating that the DNA and the hair can tell us so much about what happened in Mutton's life, and what happened in Coast Salish times.

So it's not just about the dog, it's about the upheaval brought about by diseases, by colonial policies, and it's all being told through the dog's story.

And the reality of the situation is also that science has sidelined the perspectives of the people who know the most about these phenomena, and it is becoming clear to more and more folks in the museum world every day that there is no acceptable way to do this kind of work without having it be community-focused, community-centered and collaborative.

- The tribal people work so hard to regain and let that knowledge come out.

And our ancestors are always bringing someone forward to push 'em, so that what has been hidden can come out.

- We're able to stand in who we are, because of the passing on of knowledge through our elders and their elders, and their elders, which is our ancestors, who we believe are always still with us.

- You know, I was able to do repatriation from our National Museum in Canada, and they were minimum 4,000 years old.

Those ancestors, it was a man and a woman, I carried those ancestors in boxes, and I carried them on the airpla I asked if we could go through Stanley Park, where they were taken from.

And ... (gentle music) (water rushing) That's why I'm here to share it, and that's why I do, and we know what we did on those lands is because of those ancestors, but not just, you know, my grandfather, or his grandfather, those ancestors that we brought home that were minimum 4,000-years-old.

I do get emotional talking about, you know, that work every time, because you know what?

That changed my life.

That's why I weave.

You know, that's why I tell this story.

We're all, you know, we're connected.

(gentle music) (water rushing) - By weaving it today, you are doing something that was taught by an elder, you are connected to the past, and any blanket made today is a thread from the past.

(water rushing) (Indigenous singing) - Through all of our lives, it's what kept us who we were, and we were thriving here, you know, and colonialism happened, and we got detoured, but I'm pretty sure we're on our way back.

(Indigenous singing) - I don't think we could have moved this along as much without help from the ancestors and the spiritual guidance from the ancestors.

Now I think we've become a little bit cool, because the youth call us, call it "An act of resistance," which I think is, you know, yeah, pretty cool.

Yeah.

(Chepximiya Janice laughing)