Researcher to take study of Indigenous caribou coats back to the source

Instead of nearing its end, an Edmonton academic’s five-year odyssey to document and photograph traditional pre- and post-colonization Indigenous caribou-hide coats has become a starting point for another research project.

Carole Charette has studied about 70 coats at some of the most revered museums in France, England and Germany. as well as Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C, the world’s largest museum and research complex.

In her fourth year of the research, and having studied about half of the estimated 175 coats in collections around the world, the assistant professor in the design studies program at MacEwan University now wants to take what she has observed back to Innu, Naskapi and Cree communities in Eastern Canada.

There she hopes to tap into the local knowledge of elders and artists to fully understand and unravel some of the mysteries of the coats in question.

Dating as far back as the 17th century through to the 20th century, the traditional caribou coats worn by Indigenous peoples were painstakingly hand-painted with glorious and vivid colours, Charette said.

“They have some common design elements — dots, lines, zigzags, symmetry and the use of quadrants,” Charette said.

“They are stunning.” Traditionally, the art was a visual representation of the dreams of shamans painted by community matriarchs and worn for one hunting season before being discarded. Later, after Europeans arrived, they became highly sought-after objects for private collections, and some were painted for orders on request.

This is an interesting tangent of research for Charette. The differences between coats designed with spirituality at their core and not commercialization might offer glimpses into the artwork and its meaning.

One of the most distinctive shapes that reappears on coats from different regions and different communities is symmetric curves, Charette said.

Some people believe they represent caribou horns, while others suggest they could represent blueberries.

That’s why it’s so important for the next stage of Charette’s research to return to the Aboriginal communities and “reactivate the memory” of the local people who know the most about the art and its importance.

“I believe we might even be able to not only identify which group the coats came from, but maybe even the family,” she said.

WITH PERMISSION OF THE CANADIAN MUSEUM OF HISTORY One of the traditional caribou coats designed and sewn by Indigenous women in the north coast area of the St. Lawrence River circa 1700. The garment is part of a project by MacEwan University assistant professor Carole Charette.