Signs of the Time
Nłeʔkepmx Resistance through Rock Art
- Publisher
- UBC Press
- Initial publish date
- Jul 2024
- Category
- Archaeology, Native American, Native American
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9780774867986
- Publish Date
- Jul 2024
- List Price
- $39.95
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9780774867962
- Publish Date
- Jul 2024
- List Price
- $39.95
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Description
Rock art – etched in blood-red lines into granite cliffs, boulders, and caves – appears as beguiling, graffiti-like abstraction. What are these signs? The petroglyphs and red-ochre pictographs found across Nłeʔkepmx territory in present-day British Columbia and Washington State are far more than ancient motifs.
Signs of the Time explores the historical and cultural reasons for making rock art. Chris Arnett draws on extensive research and decades of work with Nłeʔkepmx people to document the variability and similarity of practices. Through a blend of Western records and Indigenous oral histories and tradition, rock art is revealed as communication between the spirit and physical worlds, information for later generations, and powerful protection against challenges to a people, land, and culture.
Nłeʔkepmx have used such cultural means to forestall threats to their lifeways from the sixteenth century through the twentieth. As this important work attests, rock art remains a signature of resilience.
About the author
Chris Arnett
Author and carver Chris Arnett is a fourth-generation British Columbian on his mother’s side and a member of the Ngai Tahu, a New Zealand Maori tribe, on his father’s side. With a lifelong interest in the prehistory and history of British Columbia and New Zealand, he has researched the archeology of the Stein River Valley for the “Nlaka’pamux Nation Development Corporation and has worked for the Sooke Region Museum and Archives on a historical survey of logging on Vancouver Island’s southwest coast, which was published in 1989.
Beryl Mildred Cryer
In addition to many newspaper articles on aboriginal myths and history, Beryl Mildred Cryer published one small book, Legends of the Cowichans, in 1949. She died in Welland, Ontario, in 1980.
Editorial Reviews
"This book is for those who enjoy an ontological mystery. This book is for those who live their lives through story."
The British Columbia Review
Other titles by
They Write Their Dream on the Rocks Forever
Rock Writings in the Stein River Valley of British Columbia
The Terror of the Coast
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Two Houses Half-Buried in Sand
Oral Traditions of the Hul'q'umi'num' Coast Salish of Kuper Island and Vancouver Island
They Write Their Dreams on the Rock Forever
Rock Writings in the Stein River Valley of British Columbia