Art and Place: Native Weaving and Mapping in the Pacific Northwest

Using art and geography as “common ground”, this program will incorporate cross-cultural learning to explore relationships of Pacific Northwest Native peoples to place. The unique status of Native nations is based on strong connections to place and territory. These connections will be expressed artistically and geographically through Native wool weaving and cartography (mapmaking), particularly in Coast Salish territory along the Salish Sea in Washington and British Columbia.

The program “weaves together” Native art and place, based on the geographies and worldviews of Pacific Northwest Native nations, and develops student skills in wool weaving and cartography to express these worldviews. The program directly engages students with tribal communities, and reciprocates student learning with service.

The winter class will collaborate with the Coast Salish Wool Weaving Center and its Burke Museum exhibit "Woven in Wool: Resilience in Coast Salish Weaving." In winter quarter, students will develop their own applied individual projects in either wool weaving or cartography, inspired by the Burke exhibit. Students weaving wool will be trained on Coast Salish looms, and students producing maps will be trained in Adobe Illustrator.

Finished weaving and map projects will be displayed on the Coast Salish Wool Weaving Center’s website, to accompany podcast interviews of weavers conducted by Evergreen students in fall quarter 2025.  Winter field trips may be to the Squaxin Island and Skokomish tribes.

In spring quarter, students will work with one faculty on community-based projects in collaboration with local tribes. Students can be in-program interns, volunteers, or researchers for tribal programs such as Nisqually Tribe canoe journey preparation, Salish Roots Farm (Squaxin Island Tribe community gardens, Puyallup Tribe hosting of World Cup events, as well as work around urban Native projects, school curriculum, and decolonizing place names.

Students will use critical thinking skills in interpreting common readings, images, films, lectures, workshops, and writing assignments. They will discover differences and potential meeting points between Native and Western cultural systems, and among diverse Tribes and First Nations. Students will develop greater awareness of Indigenous cultures, but also of aspects of culture determined and protected by Native peoples themselves.

Anticipated Winter Credit Equivalencies:

3 - Native American and Indigenous Studies: Tribal Cultural Regeneration

3 - Visual Art Studies: Indigenous Wool Weaving

3 - Geography: Map Interpretation and Indigenous Cartographies

7 - Coast Salish Wool Weaving Project:   or Mapping Project:

Anticipated Spring Credit Equivalencies:

4 - Native American and Indigenous Studies: Tribal Sovereign Powers

4 - Geography: Indigenous Territory and Community

8 - Internship: Topic