PHOTO: A ceremony Jan. 17 to mark the opening of the exhibit included a blanketing ceremony. (Heather Colpitts/Langley Advance)
Phyllis Atkins hands take a wafer of silver and fashion it into jewelry with Coast Salish inspired designs.
Sometimes as she works on her jewelry or her other visual arts – painting and carving – the hours slip by as she’s caught up in the creative process. That’s when she feels connected to the past, connected to First Nations ancestors whose hands also carved ceremonial bowls, wove cedar to make baby baskets or worked metal.
“I feel like I do go into this space and a lot of my ideas and the designs, I think there’s a connection,” she said.
Now her art sits next to ancient pieces in a unique new exhibit at the Langley Centennial Museum.
We Are Kwantlen is an exhibit linking past to present and runs at the museum until March 25.
“It’s very powerful,” Atkins said. “I think people are really going to enjoy it.”
The exhibit includes some post-contact items, including photographs blown up to fill walls, making the room feels as though there’s people from a black-and-white past visiting.
The oldest artifacts in the exhibit were fashioned about 11,000 years ago. The exhibit also features stone tools made 200-300 years ago.
“Most of the artifacts have come from our traditional territory,” explained Tumia Knott, president of the Seyem' Qwantlen Business Group.
The Kwantlen community wasn’t working on a museum exhibit. The goal was a book. Partway through that project, the suggestion came up that there could be an interesting museum exhibit coming from this.
“It was really intended to show our connection to place and time,” Knott said.
After the exhibit closes, some of the items will be moved to the Fort Langley National Historic Site where they will be displayed in the Big House.
The museum exhibit is also intended to show the range of voices in the community. Profiles, poetry and sentiments of several current KFN members are woven into the exhibit.
“As Kwantlen, although we are small, we are a community with many, many strong voices,” Knott said.
Atkins said she didn’t always have a connection to her heritage. Both her parents went to residential school, impacting not only them but successive generations.
“When I grew up I didn’t know anything about my culture,” she said. “We had to relearn everything. So that for me is very important. It really helped me connect with who I am now.”
Atkins, married to fellow artist Drew Atkins who own Spring Salmon Studios on McMillan Island, had to seek out that connection to community through courses, through art, through teachers like Haisla master carver Derek Wilson and Langley painter Barbara Boldt.
“I love learning about it and I’m a hands on person,” Atkins said.
It was Wilson who told her use his Haisla-based designs until she found her own voice.
“I’m still learning, learning about our traditions, our culture, through different people in my life,” Atkins said.
She feels honoured to be part of the exhibit.
“There’s a lot of people that have moved into the community and they don’t even know that we live here, they don’t know about Kwantlen. I think it’s a great opportunity for people to learn.”
