Kwel’ Hoy: We Draw the Line!

October 28, 2017 - April 16, 2018
Free with museum admission

Carnegie Museum of Natural History is hosting the traveling exhibition Kwel’ Hoy: We Draw the Line!, which explores the struggle of Indigenous leadership to protect water, land, and our collective future.

For the last five years, the House of Tears Carvers and members of the Lummi Nation have traveled across North America with a hand-carved totem pole to raise awareness about threats to the environment and public health. As the pole travels, it draws a line between dispersed but connected concerns, helping to build an unprecedented alliance of tribal and non-tribal communities as they stand together to advocate for a sustainable relationship between humanity and the natural world.

The Lummi, also known as Lhaq’temish or People of the Sea, are the original inhabitants of Washington’s northernmost coast and southern British Columbia.

In this exhibition, the totem pole enters a museum for the first time, where it is paired with a collection of artifacts collected along the route of the Totem Pole Journey. Charged with the stories of resilience they have picked up on their journey across the country, they connect the museum—and the museum public—to the living universe in which they are enmeshed.

Kwel’ Hoy: We Draw the Line! was created by the House of Tears Carvers of the Lummi Nation and The Natural History Museum, a mobile and pop-up museum initiated by Not An Alternative, a collective of artists, scientists and scholars.