sxwobabc Exhibit Wins Awards

The Vashon-Maury Island Heritage Museum’s special exhibit on its indigenous people, the sxwoabc, which was displayed from June 2014 through mid-March 2015, has received three awards from state and national organizations.  The exhibit, “Vashon Island’s Native People: Navigating Seas of Change,” told the story of a band of the Puyallup people who lived for many centuries in permanent cedar longhouses around the shores of Quartermaster Harbor.  Woven into the historical stories was biographical information about Lucy Slagham Gerand, who grew up in a longhouse on Quartermaster Harbor and whose interviews with an anthropologist in 1918 and in a courtroom in 1927 preserved important names and information about house sites.

The Peace and Friendship Award, presented at a banquet on June 20, was given by the Washington State Historical Society to Brandon Reynon of the Puyallup Tribe, and Laurie Tucker and Rayna Holtz of the Vashon-Maury Island Heritage Association, for their collaboration on the exhibit and its related program series. This award is presented to a person or persons who advanced public understanding of the cultural diversity of the peoples of Washington State.
The Washington Museum Association will present a second award on June 25 during their conference at Maryhill Museum of Art. The WMA Award of Exhibit Excellence will go to the Vashon-Maury Island Heritage Association to honor the exhibit’s “qualifications as an outstanding achievement in the field of museum work.”

In September the American Association for State and Local History will present their Albert B. Corey Award to the Vashon-Maury Island Heritage Museum. This special honor also includes a $500 award for the organization.” Historian Lorraine McConaghy, who is about to publish her fifth book of Northwest history, emailed Tucker and Holtz saying “The Albert Corey award recognizes the best volunteer association in the United States—and I hope that you realize what a wonderful honor this is, to be recognized as the best by your peers!..My heartiest congratulations!”

This exhibit was produced at the Vashon Heritage Museum thanks to the combined efforts, donations, and freely offered expertise of many Islanders.  Professional museologists Yvonne Lever and Scott Jones, of Atlas Fine Art Service, provided exhibit design and mounting assistance free of charge. Graphic artist Sandra Noel volunteered her skills to help create a large colorful wheel of seasonal activities.  4Culture awarded a grant to commission Puyallup artist Shaun Peterson to sculpt an octopus (Devilfish) to evoke the art, stories, and history of the sxwobabc. Carpenters, videographers, painters, writers, editors, and others all contributed valuable services, making it truly representative of the island community.

McConaghy and number of other notable people in the fields of history and anthropology visited the Vashon Heritage Museum exhibit and wrote letters of recommendation to support the award nominations. Anthropologist and researcher Jay Miller, who has written extensively about Coast Salish and other indigenous cultures, described the exhibit as “exemplary in every way. It nicely includes individual and tribal, past and present concerns. Good and wise decisions were made to focus on local elder Lucy Gerand (1836-1929), whose legal testimony in support of native land claims provides a font of historical and cultural information on the islands and region.”  McConaghy notes that “This exhibition uses Lucy Gerand’s life experience to provide the narrative arc and integrate the often diffuse resources that document the story of south Puget Sound Native people.”

Christina Orange Dubois wrote, “Having worked for the Washington State Historical Society for over 25 years, I have seen many exhibits produced by local heritage associations. Not many of them approach the depth of scholarship and quality of design demonstrated in this small exhibit at Vashon Island’s heritage museum. In my capacity as editor and graphic designer of COLUMBIA, the Historical Society’s quarterly popular history journal, I have read many articles that focus on local history. Few can compare with the compelling story told in Navigating Seas of Change, anchored as it is in oral history, anthropological study, and primary documents, and set in the context of the cataclysmic changes taking place in Indian culture throughout the region in the mid-1800s.”

Local Vashon author and retired teacher Jean Findlay wrote that the exhibit was “a masterpiece and an exemplar on so many fronts.”  She praised it as “a symphony of displays that appeal to all the senses.  From artifacts such as Lucy’s mother’s basket, to pictures of events taken at the historic time, to a seasonal calendar geared to how natives identified each season, to an interactive tablet that pronounces sxwobabc sounds and words, the exhibit is a masterpiece of variety and truth.  Not verisimilitude.  Truth.”  Another educator, middle school teacher Laurent Dubois, wrote that, “though installed in a small area of perhaps two hundred square feet, it consumed my attention for over two hours. Its mix of artifacts and activities; photos, maps, and illustrations; art, and primary source documents—all accompanied by well-written and informative captions—revealed a part of our local history that until now was poorly understood or documented. Its use of the life of Vashon native and member of the Sxwobabc band of Puyallup, Lucy Gerand, as the story telling vehicle was engrossing, compelling and moving.”

These expressions of support and appreciation provide incentives to the Vashon-Maury Island Heritage Museum to adapt the exhibit to become a traveling educational exhibit, available to schools, tribes, and other museums around the state. A poster version of the Seasonal Round wheel may be purchased for ten dollars at the museum gift shop.