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Royal B.C. Museum Reopens Some Exhibits In First Peoples Gallery

The ceremonial house has been repainted for the first time since 1977 by family members, and two languages have been added to the Our Living Languages exhibit

Portions of the First Peoples Gallery at the Royal B.C. Museum reopened on Tuesday with updated language exhibits and a splash of new paint, after being closed for 15 months.

The ceremonial house belonging to late Kwakwaka'wakw chief Jonathan Hunt has been repainted for the first time since 1977 by family members, and two languages have been added to the redesigned Our Living Languages exhibit.

Totem Hall and other areas of the First Peoples Gallery remain closed, but the two exhibits are reopening just in time for the start of the cruise-ship season. Norwegian Bliss is set to pull into Ogden Point this afternoon, the first of 315 ship visits to Victoria this year.

"It's exciting to see the Royal B.C. Museum continue to reopen exhibits that tell the stories of our province's history," Lana Popham, minister of Tourism, Arts, Culture and Sport, said in a statement.

The Jonathan Hunt House is both a museum installation and a working ceremonial house for potlatch ceremonies. Potlatches were outlawed in Canada from 1884 until 1951.

Chief Kwakwabalasami, the late Jonathan Hunt, was a Kwakwaka'wakw chief who lived in Tsaxis on the northeast coast of Vancouver Island near Fort Rupert.

Over the course of two weeks, two of Hunt's grandsons, master carver and artist Richard Hunt and Jason Hunt, repainted the house, including house posts, chief seats, dance screen, log drum and the welcome figure.

Richard Hunt, a former museum employee, said he has fond memories of installing the house with his father when the exhibit first opened in 1977.

"It was great to be back working at the museum and it was an honour to restore these family treasures," he said in a statement.

An arrangement allows the Royal B.C. Museum to exhibit the Jonathan Hunt House re-creation indefinitely while cultural ownership of the house and its images remain in the Hunt family.

Meanwhile, the museum said it has added the pentl'atch and Klallam languages to the redesigned Our Living Languages exhibit, bringing the total number of languages represented to 36.

Tracey Herbert, chief executive officer with the First Peoples' Cultural Council, said B.C. Is a "global hotspot" for language diversity and has more than 50 per cent of Canada's Indigenous languages.

The new exhibit is a "demonstration of the innovative work of the B.C. First Nations language champions who are acknowledged in Canada and around the world as leaders in community-based language revitalization models and strategies," she said.

The pentl'atch language, previously one of three "sleeping" First Nations languages in B.C. With no active use or learning — the last fluent speaker had died 80 years ago — is being revived by Qualicum First Nation through two English-pentla'ch and German-pentl'ach dictionaries and a smattering of stories written in pentl'ach and in German.

The Klallam language was once a dialect commonly heard in Beecher Bay, around Juan de Fuca Strait, and on the north shore of the Olympic Peninsula, and is still taught and spoken in Washington state, according to the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe near Port Angeles.

There was no audio component to the Klallam language exhibit on Tuesday. Museum staff said they are working to get permission for a recording.

Our Living Languages is now housed in a compact, low-ceiling area of the gallery where Haida argillite carvings used to sit.

First-time visitor Melissa Crane said the exhibit reminded her of the Native American cultures around her hometown of Spokane Valley in Washington state.

Crane, visiting with her family on vacation, was fascinated by the house posts in the Jonathan Hunt House. "I'm very curious about the story of Raven."

Museum CEO Tracey Drake said it was important to reopen the two exhibits while staff work to sort and catalogue the rest of the First Peoples Gallery.

"We've heard loud and clear from tourists and British Columbians that they come into the museum and they really want to see the Indigenous galleries," she said. "We had no Indigenous representation within the museum [exhibits] over the last few years."

Staff worked over the weekend and "until the last minute" to get the exhibits ready for Tuesday, she said, adding the museum is working closely with First Nation representatives who are leading the rest of the gallery reopening.

The gallery committee now has 22 representatives hailing from six of the seven major First Nations language families in B.C., Drake said. "They're doing the heavy lifting. We're just facilitating the work."

The next phase of reopening is tentatively scheduled for the end of this year, she said.

The Totem Hall has been identified as one of the priority exhibits. Plans are in place for a mini-exhibit on repatriation in the empty space where a Nuxalk totem pole stood for 54 years.

The pole, carved in the mid-1800s in the South Bentinck (Talleomy) on B.C.'s central coast, was taken to Victoria in 1912 during a global wave of unscrupulous purchases and theft of First Nation totem poles by collectors and museums.

It was returned to the nation last February after years of delays and a lawsuit from the Nuxalk Nation.

Previous museum CEO Alicia Dubois faced intense criticism for the decision to close the First Peoples Gallery and Old Town exhibit on Jan 1, 2022. The closings of the popular third-floor galleries were part of an effort to "decolonize" the museum and include more voices from B.C.'s history, the museum said at the time.

Old Town reopened last summer as a smaller, reworked exhibition space with re-contextualized information panels and new information.

About 15 per cent of the items previously on display in Old Town are now in storage, mostly material compromised by time or found to have pest infestations.

Drake said there was no damage found among the First Nation artifacts, but one section will need asbestos-remediation before it can reopen.

While the First Peoples Gallery was closed, the space was used to host First Nations who are in the process of repatriating their possessions from the museum.

Museum officials have said it will be a ­monumental task to sort and catalogue the thousands of pieces in multiple displays in the First Peoples Gallery.

The process is also aimed at correcting omissions and mistakes — one example being a mannequin of a Coast Salish chief that's been on display for decades wearing regalia from five different nations.

"The museum is fully committed to ensuring significant thought and attention is given, working alongside communities to reopen the gallery to the public," the museum said in a statement.

Duncan Mulligan, who was visiting the museum on Tuesday for the first time in 10 years, said more spaces like the First Peoples Gallery are needed.

His hometown museum in Quesnel is largely focused on Cariboo pioneer history, he said. Though there's a large Indigenous population in the area, their history is not well known.

High school curricula are changing that, but there are still a lot of misconceptions, Mulligan said, pointing to controversy surrounding his hometown mayor's wife, Pat Morton, as one example.

The Lhtako Dene Nation lodged a protest to Quesnel city council last month after Morton was found to be distributing literature skeptical of the history and harms of residential schools.

mjlo@timescolonist.Com

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Proposed Arts & Innovation District Aims To Bring More Arts And Marine Industry To Victoria's Downtown

An ambitious new development aimed at bringing more arts, culture and marine industry to Victoria's downtown takes its first step to reality this month.

Reliance Properties will be presenting its master plan and rezoning application for the new Arts & Innovation District on April 18.

The redevelopment covers two city blocks and 400 feet of waterfront on the Upper Harbour, around the iconic Capital Iron building.

"What we are planning to do is bring a mix of artist studio, residential, retail commercial, marine industrial and culture," Jon Stovell, Reliance Properties president, said.

The plan includes preserving three heritage buildings along Store Street, including Capital Iron, Valhalla Pure and a small brick building, as well as the construction of about 12 buildings that will be a mix of industrial, commercial and residential hubs.

The approximate 900-square-foot plan, designed by architect Franc D'Ambrosio, will take over the existing ­Capital Iron parking lot, the waterfront behind the heritage buildings and replace current retail stores along Government St.

It includes public access to the waterfront, retail spaces, art studios and industrial buildings. Both rental apartments and owned condominiums are also expected to be built.

"I think it's an area of the city that is underutilized and underdeveloped and there's all sorts of needs from housing people, to providing space for industry and technology," Stovell said.

One of the key fixtures of the project is a new building for the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, moving it from the Rockland neighbourhood into the downtown core.

Nancy Noble, the gallery's director and CEO, said this would make the gallery more accessible to people, which is something it is working towards.

"And the tourist attraction for us is huge. If we are at one end of the harbour and the Royal BC Museum is at the other, it's a great kind of bookend for people to come and really learn about Victoria," Noble said.

She added the new building would be much bigger, providing more space for its collection.

"We have over 23,ooo art objects, which is the largest publicly held collection in the province, and much of it is in storage," Noble explained. "We don't have enough space to display them."

Outside the new art gallery building would be a public plaza that could be used for special events, including the gallery's annual Moss Street Paint-in held every July, according to Noble.

Another part of the project's plan is bringing marine industry back to the waterfront with spaces for commercial marine industry and ocean research.

Finest at Sea Ocean Products, currently based in James Bay, is looking to relocate to the district.

Owner Bob Fraumeni told CHEK News he has eight boats catching seafood along Vancouver Island's west coast and around Haida Gwaii.

He said if his company could move to the harbourfront, he could build docks for his boats to tie up and do repairs, making it a working harbour.

"Having my boats unloading, the fish being processed and cooked, served and people circulating though," Fraumeni said. "It is a very central area and wonderful and vibrant, having the water connected to it."

The approximately $600 million project is expected to be built in a phases, with the first phase including rental apartments, office and retail space and the art gallery.

Stovell said when the project is fully built there will be upwards of 1,800 jobs.

Reliance Properties has previously done work in the Greater Victoria region working on projects like the Janion, Northern Junk properties and the Beachlands development in Colwood.

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Royal B.C. Museum Reopens Ceremonial House, First Nations Language Exhibits

Exhibit features updated information about the resurgence of First Nations languages in the province

An exhibit from the third floor of B.C. Royal Museum is pictured in Victoria, Wednesday, December 29, 2021. In January 2022, the museum announced that it will be closing the third floor including parts of the First Peoples Gallery in an effort to decolonize the institution. Two exhibits reopened April 2, 2024. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward)

The Royal BC Museum reopened two exhibits in the First Peoples Gallery that was closed to visitors in January 2022.

Jonathan Hunt House, a museum installation and real ceremonial house, and an updated version of Our Living Languages welcomed visitors, starting April 2.

The museum closed the third floor to update and expand the cultural narratives of those galleries originally created in the 1960s and 1970s. Old Town reopened in July 2023.

The museum has brought together representatives from First Nations and Indigenous communities across the province to partner on the future of remaining areas of the First Peoples Gallery.

RELATED: 'Critical thinking' panels added as RBCM's Old Town set to reopen this summer

"These spaces on the museum's third floor share important Indigenous stories and this work is a reflection of the museum's continued commitment to the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act by delivering unique experiences for British Columbians," CEO Tracey Drake said in a news release.

Jonathan Hunt House allows visitors to enter a recreation of the house of Chief Kwakwabalasami, the late Jonathan Hunt, a Kwakwaka'wakw chief who was born and lived his life in the community of Tsaxis, near Fort Rupert.

To refresh the space, the museum brought in master carver and artist Richard Hunt, Jonathan Hunt's grandson, who helped his father with the original installation in 1977.

"I have great memories of working at the Royal BC Museum because all I ever wanted to do was work with my dad, Henry Hunt, and my wish came true," Richard Hunt said. "When I was made my dad's assistant, he decided it was time for him to leave because he had fulfilled a commitment he had with Mungo Martin to always have a Kwaguilth carving at Thunderbird Park. It was great to be back working at the museum and it was an honour to restore these family treasures."

With help from Jason Hunt, Richard's nephew and grandson of the late chief, this is the first time the space has been repainted since it opened in 1977.

RELATED: Royal B.C. Museum phasing out galleries that push colonial narrative

Developed in partnership with the First Peoples' Cultural Council, Our Living Languages shares the history of First Nations languages in B.C..

The exhibit features updated information about the resurgence of First Nations languages in the province, including the addition of two recently recognized languages. These include pentl'atch, which has moved from a sleeping to a living language, and Klallam, to bring the list of B.C. First Nations languages to 36. Data has also been updated for all languages to reflect the findings of the First Peoples' Cultural Council's 2022 Report on the Status of BC First Nations Languages.

"Our Living Languages celebrates the incredible diversity of First Nations languages in British Columbia and acknowledges the language revitalization work of the First Peoples of this land," said Tracey Herbert, chief executive officer with the First Peoples' Cultural Council.

"B.C. Is a global hotspot for language diversity, with over 50 per cent of Canada's Indigenous languages located here. The language data included in the updated exhibit is a demonstration of the innovative work of the B.C. First Nations language champions who are acknowledged in Canada and around the world as leaders in community-based language revitalization models and strategies. We invite visitors and people from B.C. To learn more about this important work and the First Nations languages of this land."

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