Written by John Vaillant
Hazel Wilson’s one woman show of Haida ceremonial robes, The Story of K’iid K’iyaas, is not only stunning and disturbing, it represents, literally, the making of history, bead to luminous bead, stitch by painstaking stitch. The exhibition, which runs from Dec. 3 to Jan. 15 at the Marion Scott Gallery in Gastown, includes 15 lavishly decorated melton wool panels modeled on the ceremonial robes (also known as “button blankets”) made and worn by many native people on the northwest coast. Each one depicts a scene from the mythical life and untimely death of the legendary Golden Spruce.
The tree, 50 metres tall and covered in luminous golden needles, was sacred to the Haida people who describe it as a human being who had been transformed. For 300 years it stood on the bank of the Yakoun River in the Queen Charlotte Islands (Haida Gwaii) until a misguided logger-turned-activist felled it with a chainsaw.
Hazel Wilson, who was born in Haida Gwaii in 1941, was identified as a maker of button blankets while still a teenager. They wouldn’t even let me cook or fish,” says Wilson of the elders in her family who insisted she concentrate on her sewing. “They didn’t want me to be distracted.” Apparently, these relatives saw the early spark that now, half a century later, arcs and crackles across the pieces in the current show.
