From The Stranger:

Susan Pavel, du’kWXaXa’t3w3l (Sacred Change for Each Other), 2007

No list like this would make any sense without native art, and yet most everything that passes for the native art of Seattle is actually art from hundreds of miles north of here. Only in the last few decades have the Salish-speaking people, the real native people of this coastal-turned-urban region, begun to reclaim their lost and undervalued traditions. This mountain-goat-hair robe—the first such robe to be made in a century—woven and hand dyed with native plants by Susan Pavel, is not just a robe: It is a she, a feminine entity with a mission, as one Skokomish spiritual leader says. She (robe) commemorates the “sacred change” of rediscovering Salish ways and is meant to inspire future generations. The vertical dashes are backbones, urging strength even in struggle; the tied ends on the robe’s fringes are a reminder not to leave things undone. She is a soft monument.