Hul'q'umi'num' art, history and legacies on display in new city-wide virtual art tour
Spindle Whorl carved by the late Joel Good on display at the Courtyard Marriott downtown Nanaimo. (City of Nanaimo)
Snuneymuxw First Nation and the City of Nanaimo have partnered up to create a new virtual art tour highlighting Indigenous artwork and stories.
SNUNEYMUXW ‘imush tu hulitum (Walk of Life) Public Art Tour, a self guided tour has now been unveiled in Nanaimo. The free virtual tour highlights artwork created by Snuneymuxw First Nation artists on display through the Snuneymuxw territory within the City of Nanaimo.
Featured on the tour is artwork by the group Ay Lelum – The Good House of Design. The artist group is made up of Aunalee Boyd-Good, Sophia Good, Sandra Moorhouse-Good, the late Dr. William Good ts'usqinuxun, and the late Joel Good.
Director and designer of Ay Lelum, Aunalee Boyd-Good spoke to CHLY about the art tour. She said a tour like this has been on a lot of artist’s radars for a while.
“I know personally, we had some family visiting a number of years ago from Europe, and their plans were changed one day because it was a rainy day, and so we all just piled in a minivan and drove around and looked at all of our family's artwork,” Boyd-Good said. “So, in doing that, I do know that there is enough art in the city to keep people busy for a long time, and there's so many beautiful pieces to look at. That was just a small fraction of what's in the city.”
She emphasized that on top of showcasing the work of Snuneymuxw artists, the tour acknowledges the land that artwork was created on.
“It's really important to honour that and to celebrate that because these works are woven throughout our city, and it's just really important to be able to understand them,” she said. “There's so much more to the artwork than what meets the eye.”
Boyd-Good said the artwork created by her late father and brother was made through the teaching of Hul'q'umi'num' art as a written visual language.
“So where there wasn't an alphabet or a dictionary, stories would be told through the artwork, and that's happened throughout my entire life,” she said. “My father carved milestones of all of his children into artworks all of our lives. So, it's really important for people to understand that these pieces carry stories. They carry significance, meaning, and they connect to ancient ways of life that are really important to acknowledge, to understand, and to celebrate.”
Carvings, murals and storm covers created by the late Dr. William Good and the late Joel Good can be found all over Nanaimo. Boyd-Good said her father spent his entire career dedicated to revitalizing traditional Hul'q'umi'num', Coast Salish and Snuneymuxw art forms. Her brother and the rest of the family have worked toward that goal as well.
“It's critical that that doesn't get lost, that it doesn't get lost over time. It's important that people understand it. It was really critical and vital information,” she said. “So that affects the future of Hul'q'umi'num', art. It affects the future of artists and what they can practice and how they can see a future for themselves.”
Boyd-Good remembered the work her father did making sure Hul'q'umi'num' artwork would forever be shared in the community.
“When my dad started his research, there really wasn't very much for him to work with. It was almost extinct. He did have to rely on museums where he would phone them and ask them to fax him photos. It took him a long time to research and find the information he needed because these pieces were all over the world,” she said. “They were scattered in museums all over the world, and here we are now, we can have these pieces in our home community, and that was really important for him to leave a legacy, leave a mark on the community.”
She said the tour is about connecting people to Snuneymuxw artists with various art forms and styles.
“They can see the connectivity of all of the artwork because this is Hul'q'umi'num', territory, and there was an era where there was not a lot of Hul'q'umi'num' art in Hul'q'umi'num' territories, so we're celebrating that,” Boyd-Good said. “We're celebrating having that traditional art form throughout our city, and it's really important for people to be able to go to a landscape and then learn about the people from that land.”
Some of the other artists featured on the tour are; Noel Brown, James Johnny Sr., James Johnny Jr., and Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun.
“I love that there are many different ways of practising artwork throughout the city and different ways of creating Hul'q'umi'num' art with modern techniques,” she said. “That's a lot of what we celebrate as a family is engaging in both those traditional practices and then how can we bring them forward into modern settings with modern techniques and advance them but still remaining true to those traditional practices.”
Boyd-Good said it has become a comfort seeing the artwork and legacy of her late father and late brother continue to be showcased all throughout Nanaimo and Snuneymuxw territory.
The SNUNEYMUXW ‘imush tu hulitum (Walk of Life) Public Art Tour is now available to anybody with a mobile device or computer.
Funding Note: This story was produced with funding support from the Local Journalism Initiative, administered by the Community Radio Fund of Canada.
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