Sara Jacobsen, 19, grew up eating family dinners beneath a stunning Native American robe.
Not
that she gave it much thought. Until, that is, her senior year of high
school, when she saw a picture of a strikingly similar robe in an art
history class.
The teacher told the class about how the robe was
used in spiritual ceremonies, Sara Jacobsen said. “I started to wonder
why we have it in our house when we’re not Native American.”
She said she asked her dad a few questions about this robe. Her dad, Bruce Jacobsen, called that an understatement.
“I
felt like I was on the wrong side of a protest rally, with terms like
‘cultural appropriation’ and ‘sacred ceremonial robes’ and ‘completely
inappropriate,’ and terms like that,” he said.
“I got defensive
at first, of course,” he said. “I was like, ‘C’mon, Sara! This is more
of the political stuff you all say these days.’”
But Sara didn’t
back down. “I feel like in our country there are so many things that
white people have taken that are not theirs, and I didn’t want to
continue that pattern in our family,” she said.
The robe had been
a centerpiece in the Jacobsen home. Bruce Jacobsen bought it from a
gallery in Pioneer Square in 1986, when he first moved to Seattle. He
had wanted to find a piece of Native art to express his appreciation of
the region.
The Chilkat robe that hung over the Jacobsen dining room table for years. Credit Courtesy of the Jacobsens
“I just thought it was so beautiful, and it was like nothing I had seen before,” Jacobsen said.
The
robe was a Chilkat robe, or blanket, as it’s also known. They are woven
by the Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian peoples of Alaska and British
Columbia and are traditionally made from mountain goat wool. The tribal
or clan origin of this particular 6-foot-long piece was unclear, but it
dated back to around 1900 and was beautifully preserved down to its long
fringe.
“It’s a completely symmetric pattern of geometric
shapes, and also shapes that come from the culture,” like birds,
Jacobsen said. “And then it’s just perfectly made — you can see no seams
in it at all.”
Jacobsen hung the robe on his dining room wall.
After
more needling from Sara, Jacobsen decided to investigate her claims. He
emailed experts at the Burke Museum, which has a huge collection of
Native American art and artifacts.
“I got this eloquent email
back that said, ‘We’re not gonna tell you what to go do,’ but then they
confirmed what Sara said: It was an important ceremonial piece, that it
was usually owned by an entire clan, that it would be passed down
generation to generation, and that it had a ton of cultural significance
to them.“
Jacobsen
says he was a bit disappointed to learn that his daughter was right
about his beloved Chilkat robe. But he and his wife Gretchen now no
longer thought of the robe as theirs. Bruce Jacobsen asked the curators
at the Burke Museum for suggestions of institutions that would do the
Chilkat robe justice. They told him about the Sealaska Heritage
Institute in Juneau.
When Jacobsen emailed, SHI Executive
Director Rosita Worl couldn’t believe the offer. “I was stunned. I was
shocked. I was in awe. And I was so grateful to the Jacobsen family.”
Worl said the robe has a huge monetary value. But that’s not why it’s precious to local tribes.
“It’s
what we call ‘atoow’: a sacred clan object,” she said. “Our beliefs are
that it is imbued with the spirit of not only the craft itself, but
also of our ancestors. We use [Chilkat robes] in our ceremonies when we
are paying respect to our elders. And also it unites us as a people.”
Since
the Jacobsens returned the robe to the institute, Worl said, master
weavers have been examining it and marveling at the handiwork. Chilkat
robes can take a year to make – and hardly anyone still weaves them.
“Our
master artist, Delores Churchill, said it was absolutely a spectacular
robe. The circles were absolutely perfect. So it does have that
importance to us that it could also be used by our younger weavers to
study the art form itself.”
Worl said private collectors hardly ever return anything to her organization. The federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act requires
museums and other institutions that receive federal funding to
repatriate significant cultural relics to Native tribes. But no such law
exists for private collectors.
Bruce
and Gretchen Jacobsen hold the Chilkat robe they donated to the
Sealaska Heritage Institute as Joe Zuboff, Deisheetaan, sings and drums
and Brian Katzeek (behind robe) dances during the robe’s homecoming
ceremony Saturday, August 26, 2017. Credit NOBU KOCH / SEALASKA HERITAGE INSTITUTE
Worl
says the institute is lobbying Congress to improve the chances of
getting more artifacts repatriated. “We are working on a better tax
credit system that would benefit collectors so that they could be
compensated,” she said.
Worl hopes stories like this will encourage people to look differently at the Native art and artifacts they possess.
The Sealaska Heritage Institute welcomed home the Chilkat robe in a two-hour ceremony over the weekend. Bruce and Gretchen Jacobsen traveled to Juneau to celebrate the robe’s homecoming.
Really glad that this is treated as hard hitting news, no really, I am
Hey all. I’m starting a GoFundMe page for Onion’s medical bills. The whole story is posted on the link here, but I’ll also put it under the cut just incase you may miss it some how…
THE STORY:
Hello. My name is Caitlin (Yoshi) Killough. Last week a devestating occurence happened to one of my fuzzy babies.
The victim of this story, is my ferret, Onion.
I have had him and his little sister Marshmellow for two years now.
They mean the world to me. And I go out of my way to do/give them the best I can. Feeding them a balanced raw nutritious diet, making sure they have plenty of love, play time, and treats. And I try to have them roam outside of their cage as much as possible while supervising them. In that short amount of time, we’ve traveled from New Mexico, to New York, and now Oregon. They are my family, and I never will leave them behind.
Last week is when the horrible occurence took place. Onion was having problems going to bathroom that night. It was the first time I had noticed it, but just assumed he was consipated. I gave him some water (which he drank and played in) , and a tablespoon of pumpkin puree (which can be used for constipation in ferrets in small amounts). When I awoke the next morning, I knew something wasn’t right. He was still attempting to go to the bathroom every 5 minutes. He was clearly straining from contracting his muscles all night. And he was very, very tired. I picked him up, and noticed how tight his belly seemed. He whimpered.
Immedeatley me and my fiance went to the closest vet…
It was 7:00am, so they had just opened. However they told me that no doctor had arrived yet. And worse yet they only saw cats and dogs. They referred me to another place nearby, but took 20 minutes to get to in traffic. DoveLewis Emergency Animal Hospital. We checked in quickly, but they deemed him stable enough for me to fill out paper work before they saw him. I told DVM Katherine Earl,
“I think there is a blockage of some kind.”
The doctor performed a simple examination. She said that ferrets rarely ever become constipated. That the fullness seemed to be in his bladder. She told me they don’t usually perform on ferrets, seeing as they were more experienced with cats and dogs, but graciously still offered further examination and possible treatment… with the cost of it being steep, and just as expensive. She was very kind and up front with me, as well as the women at the front desk giving me a large list of places that did specialize in ferrets. But just having that simple emergency examination and giving him some pain medication had cost me $139.69.
From there, my fiance had to leave for work, so I was forced to wait with Onion at the Animal Hospital for a Lyft ride.
We had to go to the next town over at Southwest Animal Hospital. At least there they speacialized in ‘exotic’ pets and pocket pets. After filling out a very detailed form, they took my Onion and begun the examination. After some X-rays, and my go ahead, the DVM Mark Burgess showed me what the issue was.
It was a blockage of sorts, but in his bladder and urethrea. He had bladder stones. Large ones. And male ferrets apparently cannot pass them. His urine was literally being backed up into his bladder and was on the brink of bursting. The cause of these bladder stones?
Peas.
After moving to Portland we were very tight on money, so I had decided to temporarily switch my ferrets to Marshall’s Premium Ferret Food for awhile.
The doctor expressed to me how deathly they are, and how multiple petitions and customer complaints had gotten other company’s to remove peas from their ingredient list. Apparently the largest company in ferret breeding and nutrition SOME HOW didn’t get this memo. Thus I had been serving my poor babies a death sentance.
They had to do emergency surgery. The only grace I had received payment wise was that they miraculously had zero surgeries to perfrom that day due to multiple cancelations. Because of this they were able to wave the emergency fee (which apparently was also substantial). I had to pay a deposit before hand of a percentage. It cost $605. $382 of it was thankfully saved to be put towards the final cost of the surgery.
After 2 hours of surgery, he was out. This is what they found:
These are the stones they extracted. The size of nerd candies. He had to stay over night for examination, and I got an unfortunate call from the doctor explaining how everything that could go inconvenient in the surgery, had. So… this raised the price.
I went back the next day to pick up my brave boy and bring him back home after paying the final bill. Of $1463.50.
They could not allow me a payment plan due to people lying and ducking out of their bills in the past. And I wasn’t eligable for the veterinary payment card I had applied for. So without hesitation, I payed it all and depleted the entirity of my bank account. It has been 5 days since than. And Onion is in recovery mode.
He has 4 different medicines to take, and cannot hang out with his sister until his 18 sutures from the surgery are removed in the next on coming nine days.
He and his sister are needless to say on different ferret food perscribed by the doctor. Natural Gold Ferret Food. But as I’ve stated, we are completely broke after dropping a total of $2206.19. Not evening costing the amount of money I was not able to make due to missed work for these two days.
I don’t want to ask for more money than I need. I just want to be able to live with my fiance and my two wonderful ferrets in pain-free peace. And now with the threat of losing my job, I cannot risk doing nothing.
THE REWARDS:
Like many of you I do my best to make an honest living for myself and my family. So I am prepaired to work to reward those who donate to our cause.
For those who submit $15 or over, they receive a free print of my sweet little Onion as a thank you. It will also be hand signed, and mailed right to your door.
For those willing to spend $50 or over, I will graciously do a thank you digital art commission of a bust of their own pet.
that, is the entirty of our story. I am potentially jobless by the middle of this month and would perfer to be able to support my family until than doing whatever I can. I do have a couple of potential interviews, but I need to cover every base I can think of. Having the funds to atleast recover from these medical bills will give me a chance to look for more work and be able to provide food and shelter for my family.
So please, share this with ferret lovers, pet sympathizers, Marshall haters, or just ANYONE and EVERYONE you can think of. Any support you can offer, even a dollar will go MILES in helping us. One dollar for us, is 30 loads of fresh clean ferret bedding!! So please don’t consider even such a tiny amount as insignificant. Even your thoughts, and words are go so far. Just reblogging and sharing. Please, please share this story with those you love.
Holly Berries in Vase, Fabergé, St. Petersburg, circa 1890. In a tapering rock-crystal
vase, with a realistically gold cast and chased stem from which emanate
carved nephrite leaves and enamel holly berries, marked on stem.
Frozen Inuit princesses redesigns. ❤ I think it would have been really awesome if they did something like this instead. Either way, it was really fun to gather reference and draw some snowy cuties.
You do realise that Frozen is based on a fairytale by Hans Christian Andersen – a Dane. And let me inform you that the ethnic demografic of Denmark was almost exclusively caucasian until after WWII – so I think it is really unfair to criticise Disney of whitewashing when it was written and takes place in a country where literally everyone was white!
it’s got a fucking talking snowman and a breed of mono-antlered reindeer with split hooves that’s being impossibly ridden like it’s a fucking caribou and you wanna go out of your way to paragraph at someone about “criticism” when it’s just a picture with the caption “would have been cool if it were like this but i had fun drawing”
you literally want to flop in “historical accuracy” when it’s set in a fictional kingdom, with an amalgamation of clothing styles that are either butchered attempts or native to no one, freaking snow magic, and—allow me to repeat— talking snowmen and improper riding of reindeer that aren’t built to be ridden in the first place. but suddenly Inuit redesigns aren’t historically accurate enough? Because the author of a fictional story was a white Dane?? Might you be interested in learning that the earliest known version of Cinderella was about a Greek slave girl and an Egyptian pharaoh? Historical accuracy doesn’t mean squat to Disney and everyone knows it, it’s an extremely tripe card to pull.
do you literally think that every single person in Denmark/Scandanavia was some kind of 100% whiteAryan wet dream until magically after world war 2 some brown people finally wandered by??? even though they had an entire country full of indigenous peoples under their thumb AND a monopoly on trade with the place until like 1953 like is that really something that is going through your head at this very moment because i am truly aghast.
It’s fanart, a redesign, based on what would have been neat. and there’s literally zero reason to tear it apart just because you’re uncomfortable about the fact that they’re not white.
Steel Phoenix Studios 
