Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver, BC

Totems, weather-worn, and potlach bowls in the shape of humans and seals and several different creatures at once. Baskets by a woman's great-great grandmother, with her name and picture right next to her work there, great-great granddaughter proud to share. They called her Granny7.

One of my best friends calls me Jen7. We are not sure why but now I feel I am in good company.

History interests me, but most exciting was the modern art by members of the many tribes of this region. A short film by a young woman for her thesis, about respect. A symmetric black metal raven, folded and enormous, really two ravens or a raven and her shadow. When I sat in this one red chair and leaned my head back, Bill Reid started speaking the story into my ears as I looked at his carving of the Raven finding men in a clam shell and letting them out.

I am beginning to wonder if that was such a good idea.

Another room was divided by gauzy curtains into many rooms, each holding Resistance Art, "Politics and the Past in Latin America". In defence of maize, honoring the devil, and drawings by refugee children in El Salvador who depicted running from the US-provided helicopters that bombed their relatives dead.

The thing I cannot dislodge from my mind's eye: Three large paintings that are held by a wall with nothing else on it. They draw you in, so colorful and marvelous. Three self portraits of people with HIV who live in South Africa. The woman in the middle, her painting next to a small photograph with her eyes intently on you while you gaze at her work, got HIV from her boyfriend. She could not tell him or her father she had it, for her own safety. Had it, because although she was born a decade after I, she is dead now. Not of AIDS though. Her boyfriend murdered her.

At this point, I had to go to the gift shop and regroup. There was a spectacular orca mask I pictured on my very own wall, but it was $2000.00. I opted instead for two reproduced prints by two artists, one dead and famous, the other a young member of a local tribe. I also chose a small wood plaque with a raven carved on it, holding the sun (abalone) in its beak.

I wondered, as I walked through the rooms of the MOA in Vancouver, BC, which also had things from Europe and Africa and Asia and the United States of America, what the museum of anthropology will make of our era in 100 or 1000 years. It is possible we are, right at this moment, living through the downfall of the American Empire and there will be a small room dedicated to this.

It is possible the Raven will decide to shove us all back into the shell of a clam. Then future museum visitor will hear the same story I did, but in reverse.