Respect and reverence
What Is This? Who Am I?
Culturally Informed Appreciation of Coastal Peoples’ Artworks
by Richard Butler
Victoria: A&R Publishing, 2024
$12.65 / 9798339967507
Reviewed by Trevor Marc Hughes
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My visits to the Provincial Museum in Victoria as a boy always ended with a contemplative stroll through the First Peoples gallery. The atmospheric exhibit brought me to a place of respect, awe, fear, and wonder. I was aware I was among a collection that was not of me, among which I was the other, but which within me derived a visceral response.
This is akin to what retired lawyer and fourth generation settler Richard Butler conveys throughout his new title What Is This? Who Am I?
There is a youthful curiosity here, and yet a deep, authentic reverence.
From a functionality and style viewpoint, this book is innovative: you can supplement what you’re reading with online materials, links chosen by the author. Keep your iPads or phones at the ready while reading, Butler suggests.

Yes, indeed, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. What draws us in to a work of art? What makes it art in the first place? Does an eye for Western aesthetics apply in any way when looking at and appreciating the artwork of the first inhabitants of this land? “Coastal Peoples have carved, painted and decorated, woven, danced, sung songs and told stories since the beginning of the world as they know it,” writes Butler. How can those of settler ancestry begin to make heads or tails of that artwork? Noting the writing of philosopher Susan Neiman, Butler sets the tone for what he is about to attempt: perhaps walking awhile in the steps of a culture that isn’t yours reveals a common humanity.
Butler does all he can through in-depth reading and research: heather ahtone, Franz Boas, Robert Bringhurst, Karen Duffek, Douglas Cole, just to name a few writers referenced. His bibliography is impressive. But this isn’t enough for Butler. He delves further by trying to develop an understanding of cultural aesthetics. The author explores why he feels more drawn towards the artwork of Coastal Peoples over the art of other Indigenous groups, while also taking in to account “Coastal Peoples’ traditional ways of being.” This would allow for a more culturally informed practice, while also looking into his own embedded notions that came from a lifetime spent appreciating Western or European art.

This is not an easy task, as you might imagine, but one which could be called conciliatory.
“Writing this book has been personally transformative,” writes Butler in an almost penitent tone. “It has also, in that sense, been a step toward reconciliation. My hope is that readers will take it the same way.”
Of course, throughout the book Butler wrestles with the degree of knowledge a non-Indigenous person requires to have a truly culturally informed appreciation of Coastal Peoples’ artwork. As a reader, I was somewhat enmeshed in this wrestling at first, then found a kind of community in Butler’s struggle in the knowledge that I was not alone in my wish to be respectful and culturally informed. Perhaps it isn’t about finding perfection in that regard, or one-upmanship, but in the individual struggle, approached conscientiously, with respect and reverence.
Not unlike myself, Butler’s first remembrance of appreciating Coastal Peoples’ artwork was in the 1970s. “The Arts and the Raven gallery had opened in Victoria,” Butler recalls. “I received a print as a gift and bought several more, which I took down to U-Frame-It on Douglas Street.”

I think of that boy that I was, looking up in wonder at the masks lit up behind a Plexiglas case in the First Peoples gallery at the Provincial Museum, developing a sense of wonder, curiosity, and respect. I also find respect and appreciation for the example set by Richard Butler. As Douglas Cole (one of Butler’s references) writes, the British Columbia Provincial Museum (now the Royal British Columbia Museum) was created in 1886 in response to “the activity of foreign collectors depleting the province of indigenous artifacts.” Perhaps I could add ‘gratitude’ to my descriptive terms above.
In conclusion, I echo Richard Butler in expressing that his book is “for readers who would look at Coastal Peoples’ artwork in a more culturally informed manner; and listen to what it has to say about itself, about those for whom it was made, and to those who feel its attraction and power.”
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Trevor Marc Hughes is the author of Capturing the Summit: Hamilton Mack Laing and the Mount Logan Expedition of 1925. A former arts reporter at CBC Radio, he is currently the non-fiction editor for The British Columbia Review and recently reviewed books by Richard Butler, Wade Davis, David Bird (ed.), Ian Kennedy, John Vaillant, and Peter Rowlands. He recently wrote an editorial on the subject of historic British Columbia publisher New Star Books winding down.
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The British Columbia Review
Interim Editors, 2023-26: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction)
Publisher: Richard Mackie
Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.
“Only connect.” – E.M. Forster