STG’s Permanent Exhibitions

Greetings From steHuGiA

When I was approached to create a painting to acknowledge the ancestral inhabitants of the Seattle area, I immediately thought of using lashootseed, the language spoken by the Natives of the region. The traditional place name, steHuGiA, refers to an area just south of the Neptune Theatre. The name translates to “carry a canoe.” The place name, described in UW alum Owen Oliver’s (Quinailt/Isleta Pueblo) booklet, “Indigenous Walking Tour at the University of Washington,” tells the story of the area around the theater. When the Montlake cut was made, the water around Lake Washington fell by approximately nine feet and the area where Natives would portage, or carry, their canoes from Lake Washington to Portage Bay dried up, leaving the land open to development. Through this painting, I wanted to acknowledge the people of the area by acknowledging the land. I combined traditional name, steHuGiA, and with words commonly seen on tourist postcards to come up with the wording for this painting: Greetings From steHuGiA. Because this painting commemorates the 100th anniversary of the Neptune Theatre, I wanted this design to have an aesthetic of the period. I researched historical maps of the area and found a map depicting a bird’s eye view of Seattle circa 1925 and immediately fell in love with it. The map, from the Kroll Map Company located in Belltown, became the background in this painting. Once I had the postcard motif with the antique map backdrop, I needed a way to tie everything together. My inspiration came from a song that was given to my drum group from the Makahs in Neah Bay:“Thanking the Creator for the Light of Day.” I placed a giant sun in the upper corner shining down over the city and a female in the bottom corner, basking in the sunlight, thanking her creator for the sunlight and the warmth.