Keeping the Song Alive
How a woman who fled the Holocaust helped preserve Potlatch traditions on the Northwest Coast.
Andy Everson, “Concealment,” 2018, mixed media, installation view (courtesy the artist)
Northwest Coast carver Mungo Martin created many totem poles, masks and other ceremonial items before his death in 1962. A hereditary chief, he was recognized as a singer and songwriter, and was a repository of cultural knowledge crucial to his Kwakwaka’wakw community on Vancouver Island. But he lived in a dark time – the federal government had banned Potlatches, celebrations where people came together to feast, dance and listen to stories and songs, transmitting cultural practices to the next generation.
Martin, along with Billy Assu, another Kwakwaka’wakw hereditary chief of the same era, feared important traditions would be lost even though they tried to maintain cultural practices and had organized secret Potlatches. So they took the unusual step of working with Austrian-born ethnomusicologist Ida Halpern to record sacred and traditional songs for posterity. Keeping the Song Alive, an exhibition at the Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art in Vancouver, tells this little-known story.
Mungo Martin restores totem poles in 1949. (UBC Archives Photograph Collection)
Halpern, who died in 1987, was one of Canada’s first musicologists. A Jew who had fled the Nazis with her husband in the late 1930s, she recorded hundreds of Northwest Coast songs, creating one of the largest collections of its kind. She had a doctorate in musicology, taught sessionally at UBC for two decades and was active in the local music scene, but her pioneering work with Indigenous communities was largely ignored by her contemporaries.
Today, those recordings, made between 1947 and 1980, mostly with the Kwakwaka’wakw, but also in Nuu-chah-nulth, Tlingit, Haida and Coast Salish communities, are a vital resource for Indigenous people as they work to reclaim their cultural heritage. In 2018, in recognition of their immense historical importance, the recordings were added to the UNESCO Canada Memory of the World Register.
1 of 2
Ida Halpern, right, with Chief Billy Assu and his wife. (Image J-00562 courtesy the Royal B.C. Museum and Archives, Victoria)
2 of 2
Ida Halpern with her audio recorder around 1960. (courtesy the Royal B.C. Museum and Archives, Victoria)
The show, which continues to March 19, features a mix of recordings at special listening posts, along with historical documentation and displays of ceremonial regalia, such as button blankets and carved headdresses. There are films by the late ‘Na̱mǥis documentary filmmaker Barb Cranmer and visitors can try out a replica of a Potlatch drum log.
1 of 2
Sonny Assu, “Ellipsis,” 2012
137 copper LPs, installation view (Forge Project Collection, traditional lands of the Muh-he-con-ne-ok)
2 of 2
Sonny Assu, “Ellipsis,” 2012
copper LP, detail of installation (Forge Project Collection, traditional lands of the Muh-he-con-ne-ok)
Also included are works by contemporary Kwakwaka’wakw artists. Sonny Assu, the great-great-grandson of Billy Assu, presents Ellipsis, an installation of 137 copper LPs that critiques the ongoing oppression of the federal Indian Act. Andy Everson’s installation, Concealment, features a vintage kitchen-table tea party that speaks to a time when his family had to hide their songs and dances.
Curator Cheryl Kaka‘solas Wadhams acknowledges the common ground shared by Halpern and Indigenous communities. “As a Jewish immigrant fleeing the Holocaust, Dr. Ida Halpern understood the impact of cultural erasure,” says Wadhams.
Chief David Mungo Knox, great-grandson of Mungo Martin, recalls hearing Martin and his wife, Abaya, singing the old songs. “Listening to the words and beats gave the people an understanding,” he says. “When I was young, I remember my dad played the old reel-to-reel tapes, listening to the old people. I do that now on YouTube.” ■
Keeping the Song Alive at the Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art from Nov. 2, 2022, to March 19, 2023. The show, developed with the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia, will be shown at the U’mista Cultural Centre in Alert Bay, B.C., in 2024.
PS: Worried you missed something? See previous Galleries West stories here or sign up for our free biweekly newsletter.
Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art
639 Hornby Street, Vancouver, British Columbia V6C 2G3
please enable javascript to view
Wed to Sun 11 am - 5 pm
