Within Each Artifact, A Spirit Lives Indian Art Exhibit Honors Spiritual Link To Creator

They’re art objects at first - beaded bags, leather gauntlets, coiled baskets made of reed and beargrass.

They’re nothing but beautiful to most people; display items fit to be admired.

But to American Indians, they’re more than just art.

They’re also a connection to their past - a testimony to their cultures and a tribute to their ancestors’ talents.

“From Earth and Sky,” an exhibit of Indian art at the Cheney Cowles Museum, illustrates this cultural significance, many natives say.

The display, which opens to the public today, acknowledges this spiritual connection to the past. It also pays homage to the creators of these objects.

“These are spirits of the people,” said Jennifer Mason Ferguson, a Colville Indian of Lakes descent who helped organize the exhibit. “You feel it inside, in your guts. These are ancient objects, but they’re alive.”

For years, Indian art displays offended many Native Americans. Some portrayed natives as primitive and inferior to whites, said Peter Campbell, director of American Indian Studies at Eastern Washington University. They also distorted the truth and were deemed disrespectful, especially when the exhibits used items from Indian burial sites.

For some, it’s simply unnatural to see their grandfather’s handmade tools inside a glass case, or a relative’s bag framed against the wall.

“When you turn something that wasn’t supposed to be an artifact into one, it does feel strange,” said Ray Abrahamson, a Colville Indian of the Lakes band. “You end up feeling like an artifact yourself.”

Lawrence Aripa, a Coeur d’Alene elder, put it this way: “Where does a useful object turn into art? The woman who made the basket made it so she can gather berries. She didn’t even know what art was.”

“From Earth and Sky,” however, takes the objects’ histories into consideration, many Indians said at a Saturday preview.

Sure it’s odd to see vests, baskets and other “useful, everyday objects” in a show, Campbell said. But the items at the Cheney Cowles Museum are treated with respect, he said. They are revered as spiritual objects, as though each item has a soul.

“Yes, they are beautiful,” acknowledged Lynn Pankonin, the curator of the museum’s American Indian collections who directed the “From Earth and Sky.” “But each piece also has part of the maker with them. You can’t separate the object from the people.”

It’s this attitude and the museum’s relationship with the tribes that have helped it gain respect from the Spokanes, Coeur d’Alenes and other local Plateau Indians.

The show, as well as the museum’s previous Indian exhibits, garnered the collaborative efforts of elders from various tribes. In addition to scholars from across the country, Pankonin asked tribal elders how the museum could best explain their culture.

Each object tells a story, said Glenn Mason, the museum’s director. Artifacts also represent a specific person in history. “Without the people, the objects are only objects,” he said.

In order to display the items and convey the meaning beyond the art, it was important that he and Pankonin foster relationships with people from the local tribes. Since 1992, when the Cheney Cowles Museum received Indian objects from the now-defunct Museum of Native American Cultures, the two have spent time on the reservations to better understand the people and their cultures. Local tribal members also come regularly to the museum to work with Pankonin and other museum staff.

“We told them that these things are here for them,” Mason said. “They have every right to access it. … We are just custodians for their material.”

Because natives are involved, the displays convey the spirituality and meaning that many non-Indians often miss, said Ferguson, who has worked at the Cheney Cowles Museum for about a year.

Whenever she touches the objects and sees them on display, she experiences the spirits inside them, she said. She hears their voices speaking to her, telling her to take them off the basement shelves. She also feels “Hust Spoous” - Salish for “good heart.”

“Come in with a good heart and learn from what’s here,” she said. “This is who we are as a people.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo