Welcome to AMMSA.COM, the news archive website for our family of Indigenous news publications.

Museum will showcase Native village

Author

Elaine O'Farrell, Windspeaker Staff Writer, Hull Quebec

Volume

7

Issue

1

Year

1989

Page 14

An authentic Pacific Coast Indian village will be brought to life when the new Canadian Museum of Civilization opens here June 29.

The Grand Hall of the museum will feature an Indian village with full-scale reconstruction of six Indian longhouses linked by a simulated shoreline and boardwalk.

Representing six Indian bands, the house fronts were made in British Columbia by Native craftsmen and later assembled at the museum.

A total of 40 workers were involved in building the six houses at several B.C. Locations, including Haida House at Albert Bay and the West Coast, Coast Salish, Tsimshian and Bella Coola houses in Vancouver.

Their design is based on archival records showing coastal architectural styles of the past 150 years.

The Indian village will be sent in a Pacific rain forest, with the forest backdrop created by a giant screen bearing the world's largest color photograph.

On this photographic curtain, films of supernatural beings form Pacific Coast Indian mythology and other images can be projected to create different moods within the hall.

For the grand opening, the boardwalk display with all six house fronts will be completed along with the interior of the Kwakiutl House.

In the front of the Kwakiutl House will stand the 12 metre high Wakius Pole, a genealogical record of the Kwakiutl tribe.

At its base, the pole features a large raven whose open mouth originally formed the entrance to the chief's house at Alert Bay. During potlatches, guest would enter the house through the raven's beak, as if being swallowed by the mythical bird.

The pole stood in Vancouver's Stanley Park from 1928 to 1987 before being restored.

The cathedral-like Grand Hall stands out as the architectural showcase of the new museum.

Its curving wall of glass, which measures 15 metres by 112 metres, offers a majestic view of the Rideau River and the Parliament Buildings.

The view is identical to the one found on the back of the Canadian one-dollar bill.

In the evenings, the hall can be transformed and dramatically lit for a variety of dramatic performances and can provide banquet seating for 400.

Under a doomed 17 meter high ceiling, the History Hall presents one thousand years of Canadian history, told with recreations of a 16th-century Basque ship, a town square in New France and a turn-of-the-century railway station.

The Children's Museum will provide a stimulating learning centre with a tree house, telescopes, a pirate ship and an imaginary trip around the world The opening show, Puppetronics, will allow children to manipulate larger-than-life marionettes.

The museum will also feature an IMAX/OMNIMAX theatre with its amazing technology to put the audience right in the picture.

About half of the exhibitions will be completed in time for the June 29 opening, the remainder will be ready with in the next three years.

Among the major exhibits scheduled is In the Shadow of the Sun, a collection of 264 contemporary works by Canadian Indian and Inuit artists. The exhibition, which opened in German in December, will tour for three years throughout Europe, Canada and the U.S.A.

Several major exhibits from Washington's Smithsonian Institution, including King Herod's Dream which features archeological treasures from the ancient city of Caesarea, 22 B.C., are scheduled to appear in 1990.

The $160 million museum, designed by Metis architect Douglas Cardinal, is expected to draw one million visitors a year.