“Spring Root Gathering” Mural
Emma Noyes
3101 S Olympic Ave
Emma Noyes (Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation / Sinixt and Colville Tribes) is an artist, author, and researcher inspired by the traditional homelands and lifeways of her tribes. She is particularly drawn to the storied geography of how Coyote and other chaptix’ (traditional stories told in Winter) beings shaped and prepared the world we live in today and taught how-to and how-not-to live. Through her artwork she strives to contribute to and expand upon a legacy of Plateau artists that have provided a visual universe of tribal Plateau indigeneity. Her book, Baby Speaks Salish, was published by Scablands in 2020 and features her signature black and white illustrations created in India ink. Her murals and other public art can be found in Nelson, BC and Spokane Washington, including her latest mural on the Kehoe Building in Hillyard neighborhood, Spokane, WA.
The Kehoe building Spring mural captures the energy of the season in Plateau culture. Mole and Rabbit are each using a piča (root digger) for gathering the highly nutritious root foods that Plateau tribes have cared for across millennia. For Plateau people, our ancestors relationship with each of the plants and animals that we belonged with on these lands and waters sustained us. Our extensive trade relationships connected us with everything else we could need. Times of hard work were also times of leisure because our world was not focused on extraction, wealth hoarding, or placing undue burdens of labor on one class or gender to sustain inequity. For this reason, the scene includes a little rabbit who has put down her piča to enjoy a jump-rope break from digging. Chickadee and Meadowlark are on a bike ride, perhaps heading on the Children of the Sun Trail. Overhead, the sun, bringer of light that gives life, illuminates the breath of Mole and Rabbit. Their action and intention while gathering Spring foods breathes life into all things good for the people, just as our actions and intentions as artists, community-builders, learners, and care takers should breathe life into the good things that are needed in our neighborhoods, communities, and nations.
Painting a mural in Hillyard has been especially meaningful to Emma because this area is where her family lived in Spokane when they moved from Inchelium in the 1950's. Emma's love for family stories and her sense of connection to a grandmother she never met inspired her to include some funny little non-native plants in the mural, Hens and Chicks. Her grandmother, Bertha (Edwards) Phillips planted these outside every home they moved to, possibly inspired by her own fathers big rock and flower garden. Spokane was not an easy place to be a Native American woman living and working in the 1950's and 1960's and it still isn't. Emma is inspired by Bertha's actions to make every place she lived in Hillyard and in Spokane more beautiful with Hens and Chicks and flowering bushes. Emma strives to do the same with artwork, advocacy, and research. Emma has lived in Spokane on the homelands of the Spokane Tribe for over a decade. She serves as the Research Director at Inatai Foundation and a language learner and board member at the Salish School of Spokane. Her family is committed to the the survival of Salish languages and the increased power and presence of Sinixt people on their homelands in British Columbia and Washington State.
