Victoria — Old Town, Chinatown & Inner Harbour
Royal BC Museum and Thunderbird Park
Listen at the stop, then read the transcript and follow the sources behind the story.
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Transcript
The Royal BC Museum sits beside a collection of monumental Indigenous carvings and historic structures known as Thunderbird Park.
Museums once presented Indigenous cultures as if they belonged mainly to the past. That framing is increasingly challenged by Indigenous communities and by museums themselves.
Coast Salish, Kwakwaka'wakw and other Indigenous artistic traditions are living practices, not archaeological leftovers.
Some poles in and around the park are replicas or later commissions made by Indigenous carvers rather than untouched nineteenth-century objects. That distinction matters because it shows cultural continuity through new creation.
Victoria's tourism industry has long used Indigenous imagery as part of its regional identity while colonial governments simultaneously restricted Indigenous rights.
The tension is uncomfortable and necessary.
A carving is not simply decoration. It belongs to a system of family, territory, ceremony and artistic authority that a tourist caption can only partly explain.