Signs of the Time
Rock art – etched in blood-red lines into granite cliffs, boulders, and caves – appears as beguiling, graffiti-like abstraction. What are these signs? The petroglyphs and red-ochre pictographs found across Nłeʔkepmx territory in present-day British Columbia and Washington State are far more than ancient motifs.
Signs of the Time explores the historical and cultural reasons for making rock art. Chris Arnett draws on extensive research and decades of work with Nłeʔkepmx people to document the variability and similarity of practices. Through a blend of Western records and Indigenous oral histories and tradition, rock art is revealed as communication between the spirit and physical worlds, information for later generations, and powerful protection against challenges to a people, land, and culture.
Nłeʔkepmx have used such cultural means to forestall threats to their lifeways from the sixteenth century through the twentieth. As this important work attests, rock art remains a signature of resilience.
Chris Arnett is an archaeologist, researcher, and writer who lives on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia. He has lectured in anthropology and archaeology at the University of British Columbia, the University of Victoria, and Malaspina University-College (now Vancouver Island University). Among his publications are They Write Their Dreams on the Rock Forever: Rock Writings of the Stein River Valley, British Columbia (co-authored with Annie York and Richard Daly) and The Terror of the Coast: Land Alienation and Colonial War on Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands, 1849–1863. Arnett is a registered member of Ngāi Tahu Whānui of Murihiku, Te Wai Pounamu, and a descendant of British and Scandinavian ancestors.