For some thirty years, John T. Williams made a precarious living on the streets of Seattle, carving miniature totem poles that he sold locally; in fact, he was a seventh-generation Ditidaht carver, a descendent of Samuel Williams who had sold similar carvings on the Seattle waterfront a century before. John Williams was a familiar presence, sitting on benches, carving his work, chatting with passersby. However, in 2010, a Seattle Police Department officer shot Williams four times because he felt threatened by the small pocketknife the Native man used for carving. Williams died at the scene, and the shooting was ruled “unjustified,” compelling the officer to resign. In 2012, to honor Williams’s legacy and commemorate this shameful event, Native carvers and the City of Seattle ceremoniously erected a 34-foot-tall totem pole in a nearby park as an act of reconciliation.
The Williams incident, and the rather ironic tribute to both miniature and monumental-size Indigenous woodcarving practices on the Northwest Coast, does not play a role in Jack Davy’s new book, So Much More Than Art. But the incident does poignantly illustrate the author’s overall argument, and its relevance now: an Indigenous art form born in a historical context of settler-colonial violence and loss continues to evolve, serve Native peoples’ interests, and wield considerable power to intervene in social relations, initiating thoughtful communication across cultural boundaries.
To the already-prolific studies of Indigenous art of the Northwest Coast, Davy offers a fascinating look at an overlooked topic, miniaturized material culture. While the practice of miniaturization in the region extends back to the sixteenth century, scholars have too often misunderstood and undervalued the process and objects produced, categorizing them under the rubric of toys, models, curios, and tourist souvenirs, and dismissing them as only rough and inauthentic approximations of the much larger “real” things. Davy wants us to re-think our approach to miniature totem poles, canoes, and longhouses, and see these artistic products for what they are: “a hitherto unexamined program of material communication, resistance, and survival in the face of colonialism, colonization, and revitalization” (14).
For Davy, an art historian and museum curator, miniatures are non-verbal communicative devices that lack an easily defined practical functionality; instead, they function imaginatively, especially as eminently portable items that can be easily deployed through commerce or museum accessions. In juxtaposition to their larger prototypes—which historically threatened the colonial project and were consequently stolen, destroyed, and banned—miniatures possessed aesthetic qualities “capable of provoking potentially magical fascination” (186). They became a marketable means to mediate social relations between carvers and their audiences, but also a safe vehicle for subversive resistance to colonial domination. Seemingly harmless, these items embodied and preserved traditional knowledge about material culture, and even represented veiled satirical commentary about colonial authorities.
To systematically consider the conception, construction, and distribution of these miniature communicative tools, both through history and the present, Davy presents a series of case studies with selected Northwest tribes and First Nations, researched through “museum-based study, observational fieldwork, and targeted interviews” (11). One of the great strengths of this volume is the way in which Davy deftly weaves in the voices of Native artists in lengthy quotations throughout the case studies, allowing pointed commentary and personal knowledge of local history to inform each study. For the Makah, the legacy of miniature canoes—extending back to at least 1560—represents the centrality of whaling in their economic, ceremonial, and spiritual lives. As whaling ceased in the late-nineteenth century, entrepreneurial figures such as Young Doctor kept specific knowledge of whaling practices alive in his carving and his sales of miniature canoes to museum collectors and Seattle curio shops. Such work helped to integrate both carving techniques and whaling knowledge into an intergenerational educational culture that eventually led to the revival of whaling by the Makah in the late 1990s. Renowned as traders, travelers, and warriors, the Haida employed miniatures of wood and argillite (soft shale), decorated with formline designs, as prestige gifts and souvenirs in trade relations with Russians and those who followed. Davy focuses on various Haida artists’ roles in elaborating these practices, particularly their collective construction of a miniature village for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, a tableau that served as a non-confrontational device to comment on and mock colonial administrations which sought to eliminate traditional Haida longhouses, and the ceremonial moments they contained, in favor of Western architecture.
Similarly, for the Kwakwaka’wakw, miniature canoes, totem poles, and dancers were a “subversive means of non-violent resistance” (89) to the Canadian Indian Act and its criminalization of the potlatch. Beginning in the 1920s, prominent artists deliberately and systematically fashioned small totem poles and Hamat’sa dancers for commercial sale or selective gifting while the potlatch was in abeyance, eventually allowing the re-emergence of larger material art forms when the Indian Act was modified in 1951. Lastly, close to urban Seattle, the Tulalip Tribes have more recently initiated miniature canoe making, drawing upon an evolving legacy of housepost and totem pole carving practices, and generous funding from gaming revenues. Negotiating the application process of the tribal government, carvers create small canoes to learn about the more time-consuming endeavors of making large canoes for intertribal gatherings. In each of these case studies, miniaturization usually began in a dynamic intercultural context, fraught with asymmetrical power relations, and served as an acceptable and practical means to imaginatively experiment with and elaborate upon older carving traditions, enabling the continuity of traditional techniques and intangible elements of culture into an uncertain future. In short, miniaturization enhanced cultural resilience.
These case studies are followed by two chapters on a theory of miniaturization and an analysis of technique and status. In the former, the author focuses on miniatures’ “non-sensical” and intangible dimensions that influence an audience—the semiotics of resemblance, or mimesis; scaling; and simplification. However, his framework is limited to Northwest Coast Indigenous material history. In the latter chapter, Davy presents a lengthy statistical assessment of miniature types and their localized contexts, surveyed through a design analysis, that is intended to suggest “the importance of miniaturization in specific places at specific times” (131).
There are surprisingly few photographs in this book, and the only image in color is on the cover. For those unfamiliar with Northwest Coast art, it may be wise to have a few of the many amply illustrated overviews on hand, such as those edited by Aldona Jonaitis or Barbara Brotherton. Moreover, with the notable exception of Ellen Neel from Alert Bay, it is disappointing that there is sparse discussion of women, gender, and miniaturization. Women’s role in miniature basketry traditions is quickly dismissed in an endnote, as Davy argues that tiny baskets’ practical functionality doesn’t change as scale decreases, i.e., they still hold something. (Miniature basket jewelry or dolls would seem to be an exception, though neither are noted.) Avoiding this necessary discussion of gendered creativity risks conceiving of Indigenous resistance through material forms as strictly a male domain, and it would have been interesting to learn of women’s thoughts on this exclusion.
Still, one can’t help being impressed by the author’s accomplishment, producing a long overdue treatment of a significant omission in Northwest Coast art studies. With its ethnographic and historical foundation, theoretical explication, and inclusion of Native voices, Davy’s book is a welcome addition to our evolving understanding of Indigenous art and settler-colonial relations. It is a tribute to the resilience of Native artists and their communities, and to the woodcarving traditions that individuals such as John T. Williams sustained, often under the most difficult circumstances.
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[Review length: 1251 words • Review posted on March 6, 2023]