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Serpent and orca

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Specifications

Artists	Ron Hamilton (Artist)
Date	1972 or earlier
Signature	Hupquatchew
Inscriptions	80/100
Materials	ink
Support	paper, unidentified
Fabrication Techniques	screen print
Dimensions (cm)	63.5 (Width) • 62.0 (Height)
Functions	Art
Barcode	604547

Print – Serpent and orca

Ron Hamilton created this serigraph in the early 1970s. It shows a supernatural serpent, known as a lightning snake, hovering above a whale. Nuu-chah-nulth people depended on the whale hunt for centuries. Some traditional stories tell of lightning snakes being dropped or shot from the sky by Thunderbird, another supernatural creature, to stun the whales before an attack.

Hamilton developed his unique interpretation of Pacific Northwest stylistic traditions with his cousin and well-known artist, Joe David. Hamilton limits his commercial work to printmaking, reserving his talents as a wood carver for the creation of ceremonial objects for other First Nations peoples.

Ron Hamilton

Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka) artist and historian Ron Hamilton was born in 1948 on the Ahaswinis Reserve near Port Alberni, British Columbia. Over the years, he has earned several names, including Hupquatchew, Ki-ke-in and Haa’yuups. As a teenager, Hamilton learned to carve and paint from family members. From 1971 to 1974, he apprenticed with Kwakwaka’wakw expert carver Henry Hunt at the Royal British Columbia Museum. He then returned to Ahaswinis, where he immersed himself in Nuu chah-nuth life and culture.

Hamilton has worked to preserve and promote Nuu-chah-nulth art and design. He drafted artifact descriptions for the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian’s exhibition “Listening to Our Ancestors: The Art of Native Life Along the North Pacific Coast” (2004) and wrote a chapter for the exhibition catalogue. He also contributed a chapter to the publication Native Art of the Northwest Coast: A History of Changing Ideas (2013). The American Museum of Natural History made him a co-curator for the major restoration of its Northwest Coast Hall, which reopened in May 2022.