“Behind the Scenes: The Real Story of the Quileute Wolves” exhibit opens at the Smithsonian today

“Behind the Scenes: The Real Story of the Quileute Wolves” opens today at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. and will be on display through May 9, in the museum’s second-level Sealaska Gallery. The exhibition brings together rare works of Quileute art as a counterpoint to the supernatural storyline depicted in the “Twilight” novels and movies.

While it seems that the intent of the exhibit is to explain the true history of the Quileute tribe, they do take “The Twilight Saga’s” impact on their culture into account. Among the 23 objects showcased in the exhibit are replicas of items used in the ”Twilight” films include a paddle necklace worn by Tinsel Korey as Emily, a traditional Quileute hand drum that hangs in Emily’s house, a shell necklace of Olivella shells that was on the wall of her house and the dream catcher that Jacob gives to Bella as a gift. In addition, tribal members and teens describe in interview the impact of “Twilight” during a 12-minute video in which the history and oral cultural traditions are discussed.


There’s a lot more to see in the exhibit including elaborate wolf headdresses, rattles, baskets, a whale-bone dance club, and a timeline of Quileute history. Historic drawings created by Quileute teens who attended the Quileute Day School at Mora, near La Push, Wash., from 1905 through 1908, depict activities, including wolf ritual dances and shamanistic performances, house posts that were part of the Potlatch Hall and a whaling scene that shows a crew of eight men coming alongside a whale in their cedar canoe. Also included is a map of Quileute language place names of the modern villages and the vast aboriginal territories stretching from the ocean to the Olympic Mountains.


Visitors will be able to learn more about Quileute ritual life and the five secret societies that maintained balance between the human and spirit realms, including the Wolf society for warriors, the Fisherman’s society for fisherman and sealers, the Hunter’s or Elk society for land-animal hunters, the Whale Hunters and the Weatherman’s Society, who predicted the weather. Whaling was an important but dangerous endeavor as the giant sea mammals where hunted on the open ocean from 35-foot dugout canoes.


To celebrate the exhibition’s opening weekend, Quileute tribal member and one of only two fluent speakers left in the tribe, Chris Morganroth III, will tell traditional stories for kids and families in the museum’s imagiNATIONS Activity Center at 1:30 p.m. as well as presenting Quileute culture and stories in the Rasmuson Theater at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. during the Native Storytelling Festival, Saturday and Sunday, Jan. 14 and 15.


This exhibition was organized by the Quileute Nation and the Seattle Art Museum, where it was on view August 2010 through August 2011.

via hisgoldeneyes