A historic Chilkat robe was purchased at auction late last year by a group of donors and given to Sealaska Heritage Institute. Pictured on Jan. 24, 2024.
Vanderhoop says the robe at the Seattle auction house has the same pattern as a robe that’s at the Museum of Natural History in New York. Nineteenth century ethnographer George Emmons noted that the latter may have been the first Chilkat robe given to Lingít people by Tsimshian weavers. “I feel like it’s important for kids in my community particularly to know that we have a connection to Chilkat weaving, because we don’t have weavers like that in our community, so I want that to be an inspirational story to them,” she said.
“The collections are the teachers, right?” she said. “The old belongings, these creations have so much knowledge woven into them.”“The mountain goat wool, the cedar bark, the dyes — when do you collect them? What time of year? How do you process them? What are the right plant materials? What are the mordants in a dye? There’s an unbelievable richness to the Indigenous scientific knowledge that is throughout these old pieces,” she said.
“I know that a full size robe by a contemporary Chilkat Weaver would be $75 or $100,000 or more because it takes at least a year, sometimes two years to weave. So we know how much work goes into it,” he said. “So the price for this robe didn’t seem excessive to us at all.” And that wasn’t possible before now. This robe had been in private collections for at least 60 years, according to SHI.