Southwind with Mountain Beaver Woman

2004

Musqueam, Canadian, born 1951

The fishing weir story is a Duwamish oral history explaining the yearly cycle of Northwest winters. Northwind and Southwind led their villages at opposite points of the Duwamish River—both vied for Mountain Beaver Woman’s attention. Mountain Beaver Woman chose Southwind, upsetting Northwind and his people, who resided along the lower river. In response, Northwind and his people attacked Southwind’s village, resulting in its collapse. He took Mountain Beaver Woman, pregnant with Southwind’s child, hid her mother on top of a mountain, and held the land underneath his power, coating the landscape with ice and snow and placing an ice weir in the river so that fish could not swim upstream to spawn.

Serigraph

24 x 20in. (61 x 50.8cm)

The Point Family, Musqueam, in honor of the 75th Anniversary of the Seattle Art Museum

2007.52

Not currently on view

Resources

Exhibition HistorySeattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Indigenous Matrix: Northwest Women Printmakers, June 15 - Dec. 11, 2022.

Seattle Art Museum respectfully acknowledges that we are on Indigenous land, the traditional territories of the Coast Salish people. We honor our ongoing connection to these communities past, present, and future.

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