First Nations of Canada!

2 trades with a wonderful woman in Canada have been super great...she sent so many terrific First Nations cards and here is just a small sample:

An advertising card with a request on the back for photo submissions of favorite Aboriginal destinations. Ad cards are less available than commercial ones so I really appreciate receiving this one!

The Royal British Columbia Museum, located in Victoria BC has a Cultural Precinct with a park, carved poles, and a nice virtual tour on their website. This image includes a Mungo Martin painted house (Martin was an important First Nations artist and the step-son of another, Charlie James who created art in the transition period of late 1800s/early 1900s). Martin became the head of pole restoration & carver training at the Museum in the 1950s.

This fantastic card shows a pole and band house in Comox on Vancouver Island. Salish speaking peoples fished the regional waters for 4000 years; non-Natives settled the area in the 1850s and the native people were impacted by smallpox in the 1860s. By 1940 only one indigenous family remained on tribal held land.

The Nimpkish Memorial burial ground at Alert Bay is featured on this card. Here Kwakiutl poles mark the graves of members of the Nimpkish band.The burial ground is not open to the public but the poles are visible in their original locations.

Maya, Yucatan Mexico

One of my students traveled with her family to Mexico for Spring Break in mid-March...her parents visited several Mayan sites including Tulum and Chicten Itza and they kindly purchased postcards for me! These are such nice cards but I think next time I will ask students to mail them to me so I can enjoy the stamps as well.

Tulum was a port location for the Kingdom city of Coba. It was a later construction and lasted into the historic Spanish period. This structure was a small temple dedicated to the God of Wind.

Chichen Itza is perhaps the most well known Mayan site for tourism, easily accessible and nicely restored. It was a late era site, blending Mayan and Toltec cultural influences. This Temple of the Warriors is one of my favorite structures at Chichen...the stone columns would have supported a roof, almost like an Egyptian hypo-style hall.

Moche cat

am so behind in uploading cards I have received...in March I exchanged for this wonderful pre-Columbian feline bottle produced by the Moche culture in Peru, 200BC-200AD. The card comes from a postcard book of Animals in Ancient America. The sender found the book in a used shop for a bargain price and I'm the lucky recipient of this one!

Aboriginal Canada

I received this nice card via a Postcrossing tag...it celebrates National Aboriginal Day in Canada on June 21st with a poster competition. It features many symbols of native understandings from the sacred white Buffalo of the prairies, NW Coast killer whale, an arctic shaman's mask and the 4 colors of a medicine wheel. This lovely card was mailed using many great stamps that also recall 1st Nations people!

 

Celebrating the Corn Beads (1999)

Christine Sioui Wawanoloath

Miwok, California

Inez, a Postcrosser in California sent this great card of a well known Miwok performer. The Miwok traditionally lived in small hunter/gather groups in Northern California. It is estimated that their population declined from 11,000 to less than 500 as settlers and gold miners flooded into California, leading to violence, disease and land loss.

Chris Brown performed under the name Chief Lemee for tourists at Yosemite for almost 30 years. An interesting explanation of dance regalia can be found here:
 http://www.yosemite.ca.us/library/miwok_material_culture/dance_ornaments.html

Blackfeet on the move

a late 1800s photo showing a well dressed family and horses including a very nicely beaded bag hanging on the woman's saddle. The Blackfeet resided along the US/Canadian border and this card comes from a Postcrosser in Canada

Maya of Belize

its not clear if the woman in this card is Mayan or of mixed heritage, but she wears a nicely embroidered cotton huipil. She may be a market woman, perhaps selling textiles to tourists!