Eight-year-old Dylan Adams, left, of Belfair learns how to do Coast Salish tribal weaving from Susan Pavel of Skokomish, who is married to a Skokomish Tribal member. The weaving was to be given to Al Adams of the salmon center. (LARRY STEAGALL | KITSAP SUN)

via In Belfair, Saying Thanks to the Salmon » Kitsap Sun.

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.

Revered elder Vi Hilbert of the Upper Skagit tribe, seated, is assisted by Susan Pavel in donning the Coast Salish mountain-goat-hair blanket Pavel wove. Photo by Alan Berner - Seattle Times

With prayer and song, tribal members from around the region Saturday named and blessed the first known hand-twined mountain-goat-hair blanket made in Puget Sound country in generations.

The art was retained by a few master weavers, including the late Bruce Miller, a Skokomish spiritual leader known as subiyay, who passed the art on to his apprentice, Susan Pavel. Pavel, who made the blanket, brought it out in a joyous ceremony at the longhouse at The Evergreen State College. The one-of-a-kind blanket will hang in the new addition of the Seattle Art Museum, which is scheduled to open in May.

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The blanket is a triumph of an ongoing quiet renaissance in Coast Salish weaving carried on by Indian and non-Indian weavers from Vancouver Island to Puget Sound and the Washington coast. “One of the great acts of survival is to adapt Salish weaving that had waned for quite a period of time,” said Michael Pavel, Susan’s husband and Miller’s nephew. Michael Pavel spent 12 years gathering the wool for the blanket, tuft by tuft. It took Susan Pavel about six months to weave it.

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The blanket was presented in a procession of weavers from the region, each wearing woolen vests, dresses and other regalia they wove themselves.

“It’s something I never thought I would see in my lifetime,” said Susan Pavel, who, as a weaving teacher, had hoped to attend an event at which people wore regalia they had woven.

Examples of rare Coast Salish textile weaving, part of the traveling exhibit SQ3Tsya’yay: Weaver’s Spirit Power, were on display at the Museum of Anthropology in fall 2006. The pieces were woven by Susan Pavel, who led a public demonstration and presentation about Salish weaving as part of WSU’s Art a la Carte series.

“Not only are the works visually stunning,” said Barbara Brotherton, curator of Native American art at the Seattle Art Museum, “but collectively they tell a story about a dedicated individual who has embarked on a life’s mission to bring back something cherished. She honors the ancestors and her community by following this path. It is a tribute to the resilience of Native people and Native art.”

“Inherent to Salish weaving are the teachings,” said Michael Pavel, associate professor of education at WSU and Susan Pavel’s husband. “The most important of these teachings is unity, which teaches our society that individual fibers are weak until twisted together. Like individuals of a family, community, tribe or nation, we are weak until we learn to work together in unity, to realize that our beauty and strength is inherently brought to life together and not when we are alone.”

“Weaving is not merely what I do, weaving is a way of looking at the world,” said Susan Pavel, an apprentice of master Salish weaver and Skokomish tribal member Bruce (subiyay) Miller. Pavel, who is Hawaiian and Filipino, studies and embraces her husband’s Twana culture and tradition and has been given the ancestral name sa’hLa mitSa by Michael’s family.

Coast Salish textile weaving is a relatively unknown art form, but according to Pavel there was a time when fiber weaving was as highly esteemed as carving.

“Our hope and intention is to continue to build interest in the art form by educating our people and the public at large about Coast Salish weaving,” Pavel said.

Traditionally, Salish blankets and clothing are woven using a variety of animal and plant fibers, including mountain goat wool, canine hair, hemp, fireweed, cattail, and yellow and red cedar bark. Various plants, such as bark from Oregon grape, stinging nettles, various lichens and alder bark, are used to create colors used in dying the wool.

“Susan is extremely proficient in the practice of weaving,” said Brotherton. “While she invokes a traditional ethos in her work, she freely allows herself to try new things. I’m continually surprised by the beauty and sublimity of her work. Just when I think she has created the most wonderful piece, she will do another that surpasses that.

“Her work also allows those of us outside the culture a glimpse into what is elemental in Native philosophy: respect the earth, honor your talent as an artist, learn from the ancestors, carry yourself with dignity and give back to others,” Brotherton said.

For more information about Susan Pavel’s work: http://www.coastsalishweaving.com/