American Indian Culture and Research Journal

“He did not know whether he was alive, because it sounded so loud when it spoke. It started playing with him, circling about him, doing all kinds of things, fooling with him.” This is how the Nuu-chah-nulth (formerly Nootka or Westcoast) tale of the Origin of the Wolf Ritual began, with the touchstone of the meeting of the worlds: the natural touched by the supernatural, the hero engaging the spirit world. The legend was reenacted throughout Nuu-chah-nulth territory as a means of celebrating this primal spiritual encounter of the tribal hero; and also as a means of conserving the powers and insights gained for the larger social grouping—the wisdom earned through religious quest and discipline. For Robin Ridington, the experience of visionary transformation is fundamental to Native American spirituality. Although it is ultimately personal and begun in isolation, the quest for it is fundamentally conversational and social. Power comes from a person’s conversation with the supernatural. It comes from an encounter with sentient beings with whom humans share the breath of life. The Wolf Ritual, or Tlukwana, with its associated regalia of masks, dances, costumes, and musical instruments, was a major feature of the Nuu-chah-nulth Winter Ceremonies. In common with other Northwest Coast Native nations, the lives of the Nuu-chah-nulth people were controlled by the seasons, and following a summer and autumn of gathering and preserving the abundant coastal food resources, the settled sacred time of winter began. It was in the winter that Nuu-chah-nulth ceremonial life proceeded. All aspects of life underwent a kind of saturnalian reversal: the tribe moved to its winter village quarters; summer “songs, normal personal names, usual words about wolves, gum chewing, hat wearing, basketry, and mat weaving were prohibited”; and frivolity, joy, and feasting in the ritual life of ceremony were everyone’s tasks for the season.