The Evolving Cultures

As the Museum's story of the First Nations continues, displays and artifacts look at those people in specific areas.

Here we have weaponry and tools of peoples of the northern forests.

The McCollum Cache is the name of a collection of artifacts found at Lake Nipigon- copper tools and items that are now displayed here. Contemporary reproductions can be touched.

The Eastern Woodlands shifts things to another part of the continent.

Tools and weapons, some of them very old, others of the last century or so, are displayed here.

Agriculture began to be developed among tribes of the Americas, including the Iroquois

Here we have pottery that would have been used as part of the storage process for various foods. I pick up here tomorrow.

From Time Immemorial

The permanent galleries at the Canadian Museum of History were reorganized for the 150th anniversary of the country. The story of the country is told chronologically, weaving the First Nations into the story in a way that had been absent in what had been here before. It all starts with the first gallery, with the creation of the world as told in Anishinaabe oral histories. The story is told in that language, with French and English subtitles on the screen.

In terms of the archaeological record, First Nations peoples began migrating into North America with the end of the last great ice age. Artifacts and display panels begin to go into detail on their story.

In the Northern Plains, the bison was sacred to the tribes calling that area home. Items here include the skull of one such animal, and a replica of a buffalo jump, a technique for hunting the bison and corralling them off a cliff.

Totem Poles And Vivid Walls

Here we have more views from within the Grand Hall at the Museum of History.

I headed upstairs to visit the permanent galleries, and this gave me a much closer view of Morning Star.

From the balcony, I took one more shot of the Grand Hall.

Artwork Inside The Grand Hall

Alex Janvier painted the wonderful Morning Star mural on a dome high over the Grand Hall at the Museum of History in 1993.

The Hall is filled with totem poles, the facades of homes of the Pacific coast tribes, and other art. Here we have the plaster cast version of Haida sculptor Bill Reid's work The Spirit of Haida Gwaii.

The Hall might look empty in these shots, but it wasn't. I'm judicious in trying not to include people in my shots.

Outside, standing in what is a water feature the rest of the year, is another art installation. It is titled 'namaxsala (To Travel In A Boat Together, by the First Nations artist Mary Anne Barkhouse, inspired by a story her grandfather told of helping a wolf cross a treacherous area of water along the Pacific coast. The Ottawa River, with the Alexandra Bridge crossing it, looms in the background.

More views within. We'll pick up here tomorrow.