Kwakwaka’wakw (Kwakiutl)

Diane “Honey” Jacobson’s latest book is an important comment about First Nations efforts to save the salmon and her personal youthful journey to find meaning and a sense of place in life. Like the style in her first book My Life in a Kwagu’l Big House, Diane’s style in My Life with the Salmon is full of action, amazing adventures and fascinating connections between land, water and people. In My Life with the Salmon, we follow “Honey” through sometimes hilarious and sometimes difficult periods but we always learn a life lesson.

Awards

• 2012 Winner of the Independent Publisher Book Awards

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176 pages | 5.50" x 8.47" 

"'Wheee!!' Honey's cousin Phillip Boy was roaring with delight as they whizzed down the stairs on their homemade iron surfboard. Honey could only close her eyes when she saw Grandma Axu at the bottom of the staircase..."

Honey Jacobson considered herself lucky to live in the last semi-traditional Big House of the Kwagu'l people: a four-story home filled with a loving, extended family of cousins, uncles, aunts and the heads of the household, Grandpa Moses and Granny Axu. While new smaller houses were spreading throughout her community, Honey really knew only her relatives inside that Big House.

Capturing the fancy of Honey's community and family, the 1960s saw a Kwagu'l family inevitably changed by Western culture's spell. This is Honey's story.

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191 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" 

Fully illustrated and engagingly written, K'esu' is the first book to honour this Kwakwaka'wakw artist's ground-breaking work Northwest Coast.

Kwakwaka'wakw art is renowned for its flamboyant, energetic and colourful carving and painting. Among the leading practitioners was Doug Cranmer, whose style was understated, elegant and fresh and whose work quickly found an international following in the 1960s. He was an early player in the global commercial art market and one of the first Native artists in British Columbia to own his own gallery.

A long-time teacher, he inspired generations of young Native artists in Alert Bay, British Columbia, and across the province. To date, however, his considerable contributions have gone largely unrecognized. This beautifully illustrated book is a record of the art, life and influence of a man who embodied "indigenous modern" before the term had been coined but preferred the descriptor "whittler" or "doodler" to "Kwakwaka'wakw artist."

Skillfully weaving excerpts from his friends and family, facts about his life and examples of his stunning artwork, K'esu' captures the artist's personality and his paradoxes in this wide-ranging celebration of Cranmer, his oeuvre and his profound influence on generations of Kwakwaka'wakw artists.

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152 pages | 8.00" x 10.00"