Richard Hunt is one of five artists who will be “artists in residence” at the five featured homes on this year’s Art Gallery of Greater Victoria Associates House Tour. The tour takes place today, and tickets are available for $35 at the gallery, at Ivy’s and Munro’s book stores, and online at associates.aggv.ca or call 250-384-4171
‘These days, photographers are publishing giclée prints of First Nations carvings without even asking for permission,” Richard Hunt told me recently. “And they are laughing, because we can’t stop them. It’s kind of hopeless.” He paid for a legal opinion, and the lawyer told Hunt that the photographer has every right to do what he’s doing.
“It’s getting worse, they’re trampling on us, and we have no rights for our people. We need laws for First Nations, to protect our culture. This can’t wait another hundred years.”
In addition to a well-earned cynicism about federal politics, Richard Hunt also doesn’t have much time for tribal politics.
“Our people go to the Bighouse and argue about what we own,” he noted. “Before they have the ceremony, the chiefs say what you own and what you can do.”
Hunt told me a story about the ownership of his Dance of the Animal Kingdom, which he was given in 1985, at a potlatch in Hopetown.
“That’s a tiny village of four houses,” he recalled. “It’s a remote village, and hardly any body went to the potlatch. We built a plastic bighouse out of cedar strips because it was pissing rain, and the chief said we had to stop this potlatch — right now!”
Before they broke up the ceremonies, Tom Willie, who was holding the potlatch, gave out a few gifts. At that time he initiated Richard Hunt into the hamatsa dance, and gave him ceremonial rights to a thunderbird headdress and to a name. It is important that these rights and privileges are witnessed and the gifts are beyond dispute. “I got it on video tape,” he told me. “I paid to have that potlatch recorded.”
Richard Hunt gets a lot of recognition in other ways. As we walked down the hall in his home, we passed a framed diploma which was presented to him by the City of Los Angeles and the Southwest Museum. It proclaimed Richard Hunt as “the First Native artist to receive the Order of B.C., and a recipient of the Order of Canada… a Ritualist and a Dancer.” Specifically, it honoured him for his restoration and repair of the totem he had originally created for them in 1986, as a gift to the people of Los Angeles.
“I did that with Tim Paul at the Epcot Centre,” Hunt said. “It was quite hot.”
Hunt has received an honorary doctorate from the University of Victoria. And about 125 of his artworks were created for the “Potlatch Collection” of the Royal British Columbia Museum, masks and regalia which can be loaned to accredited dancers in place of the fragile antique originals.
Beyond the traditional, he has taken his cultural property to places where it has never been before, such as the witty prints he has produced to commemorate numerous golf tournaments.
“We are not stuck in the past,” he assured me. “We can work in co-operation. I tell them: “You guys understand that I’m First Nations, and I thank you for actually using a First Nations person to create a design for you.’ ”
Hunt’s graphic designs have been central to the CBC, the Commonwealth Games (1994), and the Royal Victoria Marathon.
So what is genuine native art? That brought up the subject of status, and non-status. “It’s easy to figure out who is who,” Hunt told me. “Just ask them, “do you have a status card?”.
“But a lot of native people these days weren’t raised by natives,” he said. “Later, they found their culture, but they don’t care about status.”
The times, they are a-changing.
Thinking about the new generation, I asked him how he felt about native designs made with waterjet cut steel, or sandblasted cedar. Hunt reacted strongly: “That’s just goin’ rampant right now. I just couldn’t do that. I’d rather carve it. It feels like you’re cheating or something.”
By this time on our tour, we had reached his backyard carving shed, currently home to a four-metre pole. “This is the biggest thing I’ve done in here, and it will be the last big thing.”
At the base of the pole is a bear with a man; then a killer whale with seal in its mouth and a man on its back; and, on top, an eagle with a man on his tail and and eagle on his chest.
This project has brought challenges which would be disastrous in less-practised hands, but his long experience helps him to overcome them all. Unfortunately, his hands won’t stand up to this kind of work much longer.
Yet working with wood is always a delight to Hunt. He spoke fondly of the huge laminated cedar panel he recently carved for the Harbour Air Terminal in Victoria. “That was beautiful wood,” he recalled. “I carved it basically with a straight knife. The wood was so soft. …”
And with that he turned to his engraving bench, where four strips of gold awaited him. “I’m way behind on that,” he admitted. “Four bracelets I gotta do.”
It’s hard work, but as long as he is able, Richard Hunt will continue to develop his cultural property.
This is the second half of a two-part feature on Richard Hunt. The first instalment appeared in Islander on Sept. 17.
