Uncommon Threads

Despite increasing public awareness of indigenous peoples, the Wabanakis remain less known than other First Nations because they were long ago overtaken by European colonies (New France, Acadia and New England), reducing them to small ethnic minorities in what soon became one of North America's most heavily populated regions. Their textiles, too, have been obscured by greater scholarly attention to the work of more western groups. Through recent museum exhibits such as The Spirit Sings, they began to emerge from obscurity, but only now, through research on newly discovered and identified examples, can they stand in their own right, at the forefront of indigenous North American aesthetic achievement. Yet they can also be profitably viewed as historical documents that reveal how Wabanakis saw their relationships to the emerging larger communities that surrounded them. Uncommon Threads reintroduces a vibrant indigenous textile tradition previously all but forgotten by students of indigenous North American decorative arts.