‘Representative of a sacred art’

The Teachings of Mutton: A Coast Salish Woolly Dog
by Liz Hammond-Kaarremaa et al

Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2025
$36.95 /  9781998526024

Reviewed by Linda Rogers

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The operatic story of a tradition tragically transitioning under colonialism begins with one small soprano voice, that of a dog who rebelled, and was slaughtered then sent to the Smithsonian Museum. Or, was he? This question drives some of the investigation throughout the book. Mutton, authenticated, is the only known example of the Coast Salish woolly dogs whose hair was woven into traditional blankets.

Liz Hammond-Kaarremaa begins with a conversation about her discovery and research into the one empirical example of an ancient practice, the raising of almost but not quite domestic animals who lived in isolation to protect them from inbreeding and physical damage, animals bred to provide the weft in essential weavings.

“For us, it’s a spiritual decision to weave the spiritual essence of entities into our weavings,” writes contributor, Coast Salish weaver Susan Pavel. That is one aspect of this valuable document. The other, for lack of a better word, is the nerd component, information gathered from laboratory studies and engagingly presented in a book that examines all the significance of Mutton, the humbled specimen.

Hammond-Kaarremaa, who sidesteps potential accusations of white bias by engaging the witness of many Salish knowledge keepers, and one of those, Kerrie Charnley, goes to great trouble to explain the process of naming in the Salish cultures and the sad reality of Mutton, lying in a drawer without even a proper noun. Names are precious. They describe who you are and where you come from. They have dignity and context. A representative of the breed or one breed of animal raised to a holy function by Coast Salish peoples should have a noble name as befits his station. She is also mindful of the way settler questioning and interpretation of Indigenous history is dangerously unsettling. This book represents many points of view, all of which give meaning to Mutton and all his relations. He is not replicable, but he is memorable.

This dog was named by a settler. If he knew the importance of wool dogs, the name Mutton was an insult, a deprecation of the first people of his settlement. Mutton is meat and not just ordinary meat. It is the old and undesirable condition of lamb that has lived long, not growing in wisdom, but in decay, tough and nasty on the palate, second class, an aspersion on the people who bred him.

So, the unfortunate Mutton must be, by virtue of his singular survival as a corpse, the only representative of a sacred art. The editor is joined by the authoritative voices of several Salish nations as they assemble the pieces in a story that represents past and present as knowledge keepers struggle to keep the old stories and traditions alive, at least in record because the woolly dogs are no more.

In the end, she and her panel of experts seem to agree, the phenomenal reality of Mutton is secondary to the real story of a domestic species that was integral to the culturally imperative relationship between the phenomenal and spiritual lives of the Salish people. Sometimes mountain goat hair “valued for spiritual protection” was mixed with dog hair to make an ideal blend in weaving soft and resilient blankets, regalia for ceremony and comfort in rest. Often other plant matter was spun in for resilience.

Whether or not Mutton is definitive evidence is significant but no more convincing than the stories that are the real history of cultures that raised dogs as important as separate and sacred temple virgins were to ancient European society. Whorls in Salish art are direct evidence of the importance of spinning and weaving to the Coastal peoples.

“There were Coast Salish land and ancestral based cultural spiritual governance practices, values, relationships ways of relating and understanding, and a science that recognized that all life forms had a right to live at its centre, woven into oral tradition and into our honour blankets,” UBC’s Kerrie Charnley writes, who is Coast Salish from Katzie First Nation.

Blankets are critical to protection in both spiritual and empirical realities, between which there are no boundaries. The dogs who provided the fibres that wove community and identified individuals by status and family were cherished and their care a matter of sacred duty as the warp and woof of the world reflected the patterns in nature and the spirit world. I will never forget watching Debbie Hamdzidi Hunt walk away from her brother, Tony Hunt jr’s sala, with their father’s blanket cradled in her arms, more than treasure, the spirit of him alive in the spaces between warp and weft.

The demise of the dogs is tied to the damage done by the Indian Act to First Peoples and Tent Island, a tiny but significant island between Saltspring and Penelakut (formerly Kuper) Island. Situated a short canoe trip from the Penelakut settlements, the dogs on the island were cared for and shorn by caregivers from the band who depended on reliable protein sources, mainly fish, and the freedom to travel the short distance from island to island. It is almost inconceivable that this cruel piece of legislation meant the end for a thriving population of dogs, as well as threatening the people who bred them, but it did.

The spinnability, the colour, the texture of dog hair is only relevant when empirical evidence is added to myth. Whatever shortcomings dog wool had, skilled weavers knew to add plant matter and other protein fibres to their fibre. The real authorities are the weavers themselves.

From where my family raised sheep on the banks of the Chemainus River, Tent Island was a visible symbol of all that went wrong at Kuper, as the muttering of sheep replaced the soprano whining of sacred dogs. The band still kept packs of hunting dogs close as the act closed in on them, but the dogs became inaccessible and the island uninhabited. The only comfort is that they live on in folklore and are evidenced in surviving blankets, precious treasure.

It is all about evidence, and the dog wool legend exists at the critical point where European settlers introduced the sheep who mingled without major incident with the hunting dogs from the res next door, and the women on both sides knitted and wove as if community depended on it.

Debra Qwasen Sparrow, Musqueam weaver, puts it this way: “When I’m weaving, I think about the fibre. I just feel like it’s sort of a live fibre, there is a sense of some kind of thread to the unknown to where our ancestors were or are, and that might be what makes any of us feel connected to it. At least that’s how I feel.”

This book addresses the science of breeding, the history of woolly dog and much other phenomenal data, but it is the underlying story of purpose and devotion that brings it alive, at least to this reader. Having been taught by my mentor Maggie Blaney Jack, to show gratitude to every aspect of our environment that gives service, the tree for bark, the river for fish, the bushes for berries, it is clear that the woolly dog Mutton suffered disrespect from the white newcomers. Had that not been the case, then he and his relations would have survived.

“There’s a definite expression of love, unconditional love, that gets imbued into the Woolly Dog’s fibres while being woven into regalia,” writes Debra Qwasen Sparrow.  That is the real meaning of Mutton, who transcends his name given by a settler, even, especially, in death.

Mother and son, weavers Violet and Tyrone Elliot, write a defining statement from Quw’ utsun: “Mutton’s existence allows us to have a tangible connection to our ancestors, Squmey, our culture and our territories. And that is just one story from one community. There are many other communities that exist alongside these beautiful animals, our kin.”

“Mutton’s pelt has acted like a teacher,” Hammond-Kaarremaa finishes. “His teachings have revealed so much, to so many people – not only about dog wool and woolly dog DNA and diet, not only about blankets and weaving and spinning, but about the enduring strength of oral history.”

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Linda Rogers is a Canadian People’s Poet and former Poet Laureate. Her recent book Masks Off: Finding the Balance tells the tragic and triumphant story of Kwagiulth artist Chief Tony Hunt. [Editor’s note: Linda has reviewed books by Edward H. K. Ho, Evelyn Thompson-George & Art Thompson, Bruce McIvor, Cheryl Troupe & Doris Jeanne MacKinnon (eds.), Adrienne Gruber, and Peyman Vahabzadeh for The British Columbia Review.]

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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