Crests on Cotton: “Souvenir” T‐Shirts and the Materiality of Remembrance Among the Kwakwaka'wakw of British Columbia

Abstract

AbstractThis essay examines the production and circulation of printed T‐shirts as “souvenirs” within Kwakwaka'wakw (Kwakiutl) communities in British Columbia. Like button blankets in larger Northwest Coast cultures of visual display, such shirts are unique material forms that facilitate individual memories for specific events, collective family and village commemorations, and flexible affiliations at varying levels of identification. Drawing anthropological attention to the materiality of clothing as it mediates social relations, I address a mundane—if hallmark—form of modernity as it is indigenized within a micro‐economy of First Nations gift exchanges, fund‐raisers, and thrift stores, where it visually enables both the remembrance of local events and the re‐membering of social groups.